The Attr interface represents an attribute in an Element object. Typically the allowable values for the attribute are defined in a schema associated with the document.

Attr objects inherit the Node interface, but since they are not actually child nodes of the element they describe, the DOM does not consider them part of the document tree. Thus, the Node attributes parentNode, previousSibling, and nextSibling have a null value for Attr objects. The DOM takes the view that attributes are properties of elements rather than having a separate identity from the elements they are associated with; this should make it more efficient to implement such features as default attributes associated with all elements of a given type. Furthermore, Attr nodes may not be immediate children of a DocumentFragment. However, they can be associated with Element nodes contained within a DocumentFragment. In short, users and implementors of the DOM need to be aware that Attr nodes have some things in common with other objects inheriting the Node interface, but they also are quite distinct.

The attribute's effective value is determined as follows: if this attribute has been explicitly assigned any value, that value is the attribute's effective value; otherwise, if there is a declaration for this attribute, and that declaration includes a default value, then that default value is the attribute's effective value; otherwise, the attribute does not exist on this element in the structure model until it has been explicitly added. Note that the Node.nodeValue attribute on the Attr instance can also be used to retrieve the string version of the attribute's value(s).

If the attribute was not explicitly given a value in the instance document but has a default value provided by the schema associated with the document, an attribute node will be created with specified set to false. Removing attribute nodes for which a default value is defined in the schema generates a new attribute node with the default value and specified set to false. If validation occurred while invoking Document.normalizeDocument(), attribute nodes with specified equals to false are recomputed according to the default attribute values provided by the schema. If no default value is associate with this attribute in the schema, the attribute node is discarded.

In XML, where the value of an attribute can contain entity references, the child nodes of the Attr node may be either Text or EntityReference nodes (when these are in use; see the description of EntityReference for discussion).

The DOM Core represents all attribute values as simple strings, even if the DTD or schema associated with the document declares them of some specific type such as tokenized.

The way attribute value normalization is performed by the DOM implementation depends on how much the implementation knows about the schema in use. Typically, the value and nodeValue attributes of an Attr node initially returns the normalized value given by the parser. It is also the case after Document.normalizeDocument() is called (assuming the right options have been set). But this may not be the case after mutation, independently of whether the mutation is performed by setting the string value directly or by changing the Attr child nodes. In particular, this is true when character references are involved, given that they are not represented in the DOM and they impact attribute value normalization. On the other hand, if the implementation knows about the schema in use when the attribute value is changed, and it is of a different type than CDATA, it may normalize it again at that time. This is especially true of specialized DOM implementations, such as SVG DOM implementations, which storre attribute values in an internal form different from a string.

The following table gives some examples of the relations between the attribute value in the original document (parsed attribute), the value as exposed in the DOM, and the serialization of the value:

Returns whether this attribute is known to be of type ID (i.e. to contain an identifier for its owner element) or not. When it is and its value is unique, the ownerElement of this attribute can be retrieved using the method Document.getElementById. The implementation could use several ways to determine if an attribute node is known to contain an identifier:

If validation occurred using an XML Schema [XML Schema Part 1] while loading the document or while invoking Document.normalizeDocument(), the post-schema-validation infoset contributions (PSVI contributions) values are used to determine if this attribute is a schema-determined ID attribute using the schema-determined ID definition in [XPointer].

If validation occurred using a DTD while loading the document or while invoking Document.normalizeDocument(), the infoset [type definition] value is used to determine if this attribute is a DTD-determined ID attribute using the DTD-determined ID definition in [XPointer].

from the use of the methods Element.setIdAttribute(), Element.setIdAttributeNS(), or Element.setIdAttributeNode(), i.e. it is an user-determined ID attribute;

XPointer framework (see section 3.2 in [XPointer]) consider the DOM user-determined ID attribute as being part of the XPointer externally-determined ID definition.

using mechanisms that are outside the scope of this specification, it is then an externally-determined ID attribute. This includes using schema languages different from XML schema and DTD.

If validation occurred while invoking Document.normalizeDocument(), all user-determined ID attributes are reset and all attribute nodes ID information are then reevaluated in accordance to the schema used. As a consequence, if the Attr.schemaTypeInfo attribute contains an ID type, isId will always return true.

readonly attribute DOMString

name

Returns the name of this attribute. If Node.localName is different from null, this attribute is a qualified name.

readonly attribute Element

ownerElement

The Element node this attribute is attached to or null if this attribute is not in use.

readonly attribute TypeInfo

schemaTypeInfo

The type information associated with this attribute. While the type information contained in this attribute is guarantee to be correct after loading the document or invoking Document.normalizeDocument(), schemaTypeInfo may not be reliable if the node was moved.

readonly attribute boolean

specified

True if this attribute was explicitly given a value in the instance document, false otherwise. If the application changed the value of this attribute node (even if it ends up having the same value as the default value) then it is set to true. The implementation may handle attributes with default values from other schemas similarly but applications should use Document.normalizeDocument() to guarantee this information is up-to-date.

attribute DOMString

value

On retrieval, the value of the attribute is returned as a string. Character and general entity references are replaced with their values. See also the method getAttribute on the Element interface.

On setting, this creates a Text node with the unparsed contents of the string, i.e. any characters that an XML processor would recognize as markup are instead treated as literal text. See also the method Element.setAttribute().

Some specialized implementations, such as some [SVG 1.1] implementations, may do normalization automatically, even after mutation; in such case, the value on retrieval may differ from the value on setting.

CDATA sections are used to escape blocks of text containing characters that would otherwise be regarded as markup. The only delimiter that is recognized in a CDATA section is the "]]>" string that ends the CDATA section. CDATA sections cannot be nested. Their primary purpose is for including material such as XML fragments, without needing to escape all the delimiters.

The CharacterData.data attribute holds the text that is contained by the CDATA section. Note that this may contain characters that need to be escaped outside of CDATA sections and that, depending on the character encoding ("charset") chosen for serialization, it may be impossible to write out some characters as part of a CDATA section.

The CDATASection interface inherits from the CharacterData interface through the Text interface. Adjacent CDATASection nodes are not merged by use of the normalize method of the Node interface.

No lexical check is done on the content of a CDATA section and it is therefore possible to have the character sequence "]]>" in the content, which is illegal in a CDATA section per section 2.7 of [XML 1.0]. The presence of this character sequence must generate a fatal error during serialization or the cdata section must be splitted before the serialization (see also the parameter "split-cdata-sections" in the DOMConfiguration interface).

Because no markup is recognized within a CDATASection, character numeric references cannot be used as an escape mechanism when serializing. Therefore, action needs to be taken when serializing a CDATASection with a character encoding where some of the contained characters cannot be represented. Failure to do so would not produce well-formed XML.

One potential solution in the serialization process is to end the CDATA section before the character, output the character using a character reference or entity reference, and open a new CDATA section for any further characters in the text node. Note, however, that some code conversion libraries at the time of writing do not return an error or exception when a character is missing from the encoding, making the task of ensuring that data is not corrupted on serialization more difficult.

The CharacterData interface extends Node with a set of attributes and methods for accessing character data in the DOM. For clarity this set is defined here rather than on each object that uses these attributes and methods. No DOM objects correspond directly to CharacterData, though Text and others do inherit the interface from it. All offsets in this interface start from 0.

As explained in the DOMString interface, text strings in the DOM are represented in UTF-16, i.e. as a sequence of 16-bit units. In the following, the term 16-bit units is used whenever necessary to indicate that indexing on CharacterData is done in 16-bit units.

attribute DOMString

data

The character data of the node that implements this interface. The DOM implementation may not put arbitrary limits on the amount of data that may be stored in a CharacterData node. However, implementation limits may mean that the entirety of a node's data may not fit into a single DOMString. In such cases, the user may call substringData to retrieve the data in appropriately sized pieces.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised when the node is readonly.

DOMException DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR

Raised when it would return more characters than fit in a DOMString variable on the implementation platform.

readonly attribute unsigned long

length

The number of 16-bit units that are available through data and the substringData method below. This may have the value zero, i.e., CharacterData nodes may be empty.

void

appendData (in DOMString arg)

Append the string to the end of the character data of the node. Upon success, data provides access to the concatenation of data and the DOMString specified.

arg of type DOMString

The DOMString to append.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this node is readonly.

void

deleteData (in unsigned long offset, in unsigned long count)

Remove a range of 16-bit units from the node. Upon success, data and length reflect the change.

offset of type unsigned long

The offset from which to start removing.

count of type unsigned long

The number of 16-bit units to delete. If the sum of offset and count exceeds length then all 16-bit units from offset to the end of the data are deleted.

DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR

Raised if the specified offset is negative or greater than the number of 16-bit units in data, or if the specified count is negative.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this node is readonly.

void

insertData(in unsigned long offset, in DOMString arg)

Insert a string at the specified 16-bit unit offset.

offset of type unsigned long

The character offset at which to insert.

arg of type DOMString

The DOMString to insert.

DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR

Raised if the specified offset is negative or greater than the number of 16-bit units in data.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this node is readonly.

void

replaceData (in unsigned long offset, in unsigned long count, in DOMString arg)

Replace the characters starting at the specified 16-bit unit offset with the specified string.

offset of type unsigned long

The offset from which to start replacing.

count of type unsigned long

The number of 16-bit units to replace. If the sum of offset and count exceeds length, then all 16-bit units to the end of the data are replaced; (i.e., the effect is the same as a remove method call with the same range, followed by an append method invocation).

arg of type DOMString

The DOMString with which the range must be replaced.

DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR

Raised if the specified offset is negative or greater than the number of 16-bit units in data, or if the specified count is negative.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this node is readonly.

DOMString

substringData (in unsigned long offset, in unsigned long count)

Extracts a range of data from the node.

offset of type unsigned long

Start offset of substring to extract.

count of type unsigned long

The number of 16-bit units to extract.

DOMString

The specified substring. If the sum of offset and count exceeds the length, then all 16-bit units to the end of the data are returned.

DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR

Raised if the specified offset is negative or greater than the number of 16-bit units in data, or if the specified count is negative.

This interface inherits from CharacterData and represents the content of a comment, i.e., all the characters between the starting '<!--' and ending '-->'. Note that this is the definition of a comment in XML, and, in practice, HTML, although some HTML tools may implement the full SGML comment structure.

No lexical check is done on the content of a comment and it is therefore possible to have the character sequence "--" (double-hyphen) in the content, which is illegal in a comment per section 2.5 of [XML 1.0]. The presence of this character sequence must generate a fatal error during serialization.

The CSS2Properties interface represents a convenience mechanism for retrieving and setting properties within a CSSStyleDeclaration. The attributes of this interface correspond to all the properties specified in CSS2. Getting an attribute of this interface is equivalent to calling the getPropertyValue method of the CSSStyleDeclaration interface. Setting an attribute of this interface is equivalent to calling the setProperty method of the CSSStyleDeclaration interface.

A conformant implementation of the CSS module is not required to implement the CSS2Properties interface. If an implementation does implement this interface, the expectation is that language-specific methods can be used to cast from an instance of the CSSStyleDeclaration interface to the CSS2Properties interface.

If an implementation does implement this interface, it is expected to understand the specific syntax of the shorthand properties, and apply their semantics; when the margin property is set, for example, the marginTop, marginRight, marginBottom and marginLeft properties are actually being set by the underlying implementation.

When dealing with CSS "shorthand" properties, the shorthand properties should be decomposed into their component longhand properties as appropriate, and when querying for their value, the form returned should be the shortest form exactly equivalent to the declarations made in the ruleset. However, if there is no shorthand declaration that could be added to the ruleset without changing in any way the rules already declared in the ruleset (i.e., by adding longhand rules that were previously not declared in the ruleset), then the empty string should be returned for the shorthand property.

For example, querying for the font property should not return "normal normal normal 14pt/normal Arial, sans-serif", when "14pt Arial, sans-serif" suffices. (The normals are initial values, and are implied by use of the longhand property.)

If the values for all the longhand properties that compose a particular string are the initial values, then a string consisting of all the initial values should be returned (e.g. a border-width value of "medium" should be returned as such, not as "").

For some shorthand properties that take missing values from other sides, such as the margin, padding, and border-[width|style|color] properties, the minimum number of sides possible should be used; i.e., "0px 10px" will be returned instead of "0px 10px 0px 10px".

If the value of a shorthand property can not be decomposed into its component longhand properties, as is the case for the font property with a value of "menu", querying for the values of the component longhand properties should return the empty string.

The CSSCharsetRule interface represents a @charset rule in a CSS style sheet. The value of the encoding attribute does not affect the encoding of text data in the DOM objects; this encoding is always UTF-16. After a stylesheet is loaded, the value of the encoding attribute is the value found in the @charset rule. If there was no @charset in the original document, then no CSSCharsetRule is created. The value of the encoding attribute may also be used as a hint for the encoding used on serialization of the style sheet.

The value of the @charset rule (and therefore of the CSSCharsetRule) may not correspond to the encoding the document actually came in; character encoding information e.g. in an HTTP header, has priority (see CSS document representation) but this is not reflected in the CSSCharsetRule.

attribute DOMString

encoding

The encoding information used in this @charset rule.

DOMException SYNTAX_ERR

Raised if the specified encoding value has a syntax error and is unparsable.

The CSSStyleDeclaration interface represents a single CSS declaration block. This interface may be used to determine the style properties currently set in a block or to set style properties explicitly within the block.

While an implementation may not recognize all CSS properties within a CSS declaration block, it is expected to provide access to all specified properties in the style sheet through the CSSStyleDeclaration interface. Furthermore, implementations that support a specific level of CSS should correctly handle CSS shorthand properties for that level. For a further discussion of shorthand properties, see the CSS2Properties interface.

This interface is also used to provide a read-only access to the computed values of an element. See also the ViewCSS interface.

The CSS Object Model doesn't provide an access to the specified or actual values of the CSS cascade.

attribute DOMString

cssText

The parsable textual representation of the declaration block (excluding the surrounding curly braces). Setting this attribute will result in the parsing of the new value and resetting of all the properties in the declaration block including the removal or addition of properties.

DOMException SYNTAX_ERR

Raised if the specified CSS string value has a syntax error and is unparsable.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this declaration is readonly or a property is readonly.

readonly attribute unsigned long

length

The number of properties that have been explicitly set in this declaration block. The range of valid indices is 0 to length-1 inclusive.

readonly attribute CSSRule

parentRule

The CSS rule that contains this declaration block or null if this CSSStyleDeclaration is not attached to a CSSRule.

CSSValue

getPropertyCSSValue(in DOMString propertyName)

Used to retrieve the object representation of the value of a CSS property if it has been explicitly set within this declaration block. This method returns null if the property is a shorthand property. Shorthand property values can only be accessed and modified as strings, using the getPropertyValue and setProperty methods.

propertyName of type DOMString

The name of the CSS property. See the CSS property index.

CSSValue

Returns the value of the property if it has been explicitly set for this declaration block. Returns null if the property has not been set.

DOMString

getPropertyPriority(in DOMString propertyName)

Used to retrieve the priority of a CSS property (e.g. the "important" qualifier) if the property has been explicitly set in this declaration block.

propertyName of type DOMString

The name of the CSS property. See the CSS property index.

DOMString

A string representing the priority (e.g. "important") if one exists. The empty string if none exists.

DOMString

getPropertyValue(in DOMString propertyName)

Used to retrieve the value of a CSS property if it has been explicitly set within this declaration block.

propertyName of type DOMString

The name of the CSS property. See the CSS property index.

DOMString

Returns the value of the property if it has been explicitly set for this declaration block. Returns the empty string if the property has not been set.

DOMString

item(in unsigned long index)

description

index of type unsigned long

Index of the property name to retrieve.

DOMString

The name of the property at this ordinal position. The empty string if no property exists at this position.

DOMString

removeProperty(in DOMString propertyName)

Used to remove a CSS property if it has been explicitly set within this declaration block.

propertyName of type DOMString

The name of the CSS property. See the CSS property index.

DOMString

Returns the value of the property if it has been explicitly set for this declaration block. Returns the empty string if the property has not been set or the property name does not correspond to a known CSS property.

The CSSImportRule interface represents a @import rule within a CSS style sheet. The @import rule is used to import style rules from other style sheets.

readonly attribute DOMString

href

The location of the style sheet to be imported. The attribute will not contain the "url(...)" specifier around the URI.

readonly attribute stylesheets::MediaList

media

A list of media types for which this style sheet may be used.

readonly attribute CSSStyleSheet

styleSheet

The style sheet referred to by this rule, if it has been loaded. The value of this attribute is null if the style sheet has not yet been loaded or if it will not be loaded (e.g. if the style sheet is for a media type not supported by the user agent).

The CSSMediaRule interface represents a @media rule in a CSS style sheet. A @media rule can be used to delimit style rules for specific media types.

readonly attribute CSSRuleList

cssRules

A list of all CSS rules contained within the media block.

readonly attribute stylesheets::MediaList

media

A list of media types for this rule.

void

deleteRule(in unsigned long index)

Used to delete a rule from the media block.

index of type unsigned long

The index within the media block's rule collection of the rule to remove.

DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR

Raised if the specified index does not correspond to a rule in the media rule list.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this media rule is readonly.

unsigned long

insertRule(in DOMString rule, in unsigned long index)

Used to insert a new rule into the media block.

rule of type DOMString

The parsable text representing the rule. For rule sets this contains both the selector and the style declaration. For at-rules, this specifies both the at-identifier and the rule content.

index of type unsigned long

The index within the media block's rule collection of the rule before which to insert the specified rule. If the specified index is equal to the length of the media blocks's rule collection, the rule will be added to the end of the media block.

unsigned long

The index within the media block's rule collection of the newly inserted rule.

DOMException HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR

Raised if the rule cannot be inserted at the specified index, e.g., if an @import rule is inserted after a standard rule set or other at-rule.

The CSSPrimitiveValue interface represents a single CSS value. This interface may be used to determine the value of a specific style property currently set in a block or to set a specific style property explicitly within the block. An instance of this interface might be obtained from the getPropertyCSSValue method of the CSSStyleDeclaration interface. A CSSPrimitiveValue object only occurs in a context of a CSS property.

Conversions are allowed between absolute values (from millimeters to centimeters, from degrees to radians, and so on) but not between relative values. (For example, a pixel value cannot be converted to a centimeter value.) Percentage values can't be converted since they are relative to the parent value (or another property value). There is one exception for color percentage values: since a color percentage value is relative to the range 0-255, a color percentage value can be converted to a number; (see also the RGBColor interface).

Definition group UnitTypes

An integer indicating which type of unit applies to the value.

const unsigned short

CSS_ATTR

= 22;

The value is a attribute function. The value can be obtained by using the getStringValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_CM

= 6;

The value is a length (cm). The value can be obtained by using the getFloatValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_COUNTER

= 23;

The value is a counter or counters function. The value can be obtained by using the getCounterValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_DEG

= 11;

The value is an angle (deg). The value can be obtained by using the getFloatValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_DIMENSION

= 18;

The value is a number with an unknown dimension. The value can be obtained by using the getFloatValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_EMS

= 3;

The value is a length (ems). The value can be obtained by using the getFloatValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_EXS

= 4;

The value is a length (exs). The value can be obtained by using the getFloatValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_GRAD

= 13;

The value is an angle (grad). The value can be obtained by using the getFloatValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_HZ

= 16;

The value is a frequency (Hz). The value can be obtained by using the getFloatValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_IDENT

= 21;

The value is an identifier. The value can be obtained by using the getStringValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_IN

= 8;

The value is a length (in). The value can be obtained by using the getFloatValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_KHZ

= 17;

The value is a frequency (kHz). The value can be obtained by using the getFloatValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_MM

= 7;

The value is a length (mm). The value can be obtained by using the getFloatValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_MS

= 14;

The value is a time (ms). The value can be obtained by using the getFloatValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_NUMBER

= 1;

The value is a simple number. The value can be obtained by using the getFloatValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_PC

= 10;

The value is a length (pc). The value can be obtained by using the getFloatValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_PERCENTAGE

= 2;

The value is a percentage. The value can be obtained by using the getFloatValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_PT

= 9;

The value is a length (pt). The value can be obtained by using the getFloatValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_PX

= 5;

The value is a length (px). The value can be obtained by using the getFloatValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_RAD

= 12;

The value is an angle (rad). The value can be obtained by using the getFloatValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_RECT

= 24;

The value is a rect function. The value can be obtained by using the getRectValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_RGBCOLOR

= 25;

The value is a RGB color. The value can be obtained by using the getRGBColorValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_S

= 15;

The value is a time (s). The value can be obtained by using the getFloatValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_STRING

= 19;

The value is a STRING. The value can be obtained by using the getStringValue method.

const unsigned short

CSS_UNKNOWN

= 0;

The value is not a recognized CSS2 value. The value can only be obtained by using the cssText attribute.

const unsigned short

CSS_URI

= 20;

The value is a URI. The value can be obtained by using the getStringValue method.

readonly attribute unsigned short

primitiveType

The type of the value as defined by the constants specified above.

Counter

getCounterValue()

This method is used to get the Counter value. If this CSS value doesn't contain a counter value, a DOMException is raised. Modification to the corresponding style property can be achieved using the Counter interface.

Counter

The Counter value.

DOMException INVALID_ACCESS_ERR

Raised if the CSS value doesn't contain a Counter value (e.g. this is not CSS_COUNTER).

float

getFloatValue(in unsigned short unitType)

This method is used to get a float value in a specified unit. If this CSS value doesn't contain a float value or can't be converted into the specified unit, a DOMException is raised.

Raised if the CSS value doesn't contain a float value or if the float value can't be converted into the specified unit.

RGBColor

getRGBColorValue()

This method is used to get the RGB color. If this CSS value doesn't contain a RGB color value, a DOMException is raised. Modification to the corresponding style property can be achieved using the RGBColor interface.

RGBColor

the RGB color value.

DOMException INVALID_ACCESS_ERR

Raised if the attached property can't return a RGB color value (e.g. this is not CSS_RGBCOLOR).

Rect

getRectValue()

This method is used to get the Rect value. If this CSS value doesn't contain a rect value, a DOMException is raised. Modification to the corresponding style property can be achieved using the Rect interface.

Rect

The Rect value.

DOMException INVALID_ACCESS_ERR

Raised if the CSS value doesn't contain a Rect value. (e.g. this is not CSS_RECT).

DOMString

getStringValue()

This method is used to get the string value. If the CSS value doesn't contain a string value, a DOMException is raised.

Some properties (like 'font-family' or 'voice-family') convert a whitespace separated list of idents to a string.

DOMString

The string value in the current unit. The current primitiveType can only be a string unit type (i.e. CSS_STRING, CSS_URI, CSS_IDENT and CSS_ATTR).

DOMException INVALID_ACCESS_ERR

Raised if the CSS value doesn't contain a string value.

void

setFloatValue(in unsigned short unitType, in float floatValue)

A method to set the float value with a specified unit. If the property attached with this value can not accept the specified unit or the float value, the value will be unchanged and a DOMException will be raised.

A method to set the string value with the specified unit. If the property attached to this value can't accept the specified unit or the string value, the value will be unchanged and a DOMException will be raised.

stringType of type unsigned short

A string code as defined above. The string code can only be a string unit type (i.e. CSS_STRING, CSS_URI, CSS_IDENT, and CSS_ATTR).

stringValue of type DOMString

The new string value.

DOMException INVALID_ACCESS_ERR

Raised if the CSS value doesn't contain a string value or if the string value can't be converted into the specified unit.

The CSSRule interface is the abstract base interface for any type of CSS statement. This includes both rule sets and at-rules. An implementation is expected to preserve all rules specified in a CSS style sheet, even if the rule is not recognized by the parser. Unrecognized rules are represented using the CSSUnknownRule interface.

Definition group RuleType

An integer indicating which type of rule this is.

const unsigned short

CHARSET_RULE

= 2;

The rule is a CSSCharsetRule.

const unsigned short

FONT_FACE_RULE

= 5;

The rule is a CSSFontFaceRule.

const unsigned short

IMPORT_RULE

= 3;

The rule is a CSSImportRule.

const unsigned short

MEDIA_RULE

= 4;

The rule is a CSSMediaRule.

const unsigned short

PAGE_RULE

= 6;

The rule is a CSSPageRule.

const unsigned short

STYLE_RULE

= 1;

The rule is a CSSStyleRule.

const unsigned short

UNKNOWN_RULE

= 0;

The rule is a CSSUnknownRule.

attribute DOMString

cssText

The parsable textual representation of the rule. This reflects the current state of the rule and not its initial value.

DOMException SYNTAX_ERR

Raised if the specified CSS string value has a syntax error and is unparsable.

DOMException INVALID_MODIFICATION_ERR

Raised if the specified CSS string value represents a different type of rule than the current one.

DOMException HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR

Raised if the rule cannot be inserted at this point in the style sheet.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if the rule is readonly.

readonly attribute CSSRule

parentRule

If this rule is contained inside another rule (e.g. a style rule inside an @media block), this is the containing rule. If this rule is not nested inside any other rules, this returns null.

readonly attribute CSSStyleSheet

parentStyleSheet

The style sheet that contains this rule.

readonly attribute CSSRule

type

The type of the rule, as defined above. The expectation is that binding-specific casting methods can be used to cast down from an instance of the CSSRule interface to the specific derived interface implied by the type.

The CSSRuleList interface provides the abstraction of an ordered collection of CSS rules.

The items in the CSSRuleList are accessible via an integral index, starting from 0.

readonly attribute unsigned long

length

The number of CSSRules in the list. The range of valid child rule indices is 0 to length-1 inclusive.

CSSRule

item(in unsigned long index)

Used to retrieve a CSS rule by ordinal index. The order in this collection represents the order of the rules in the CSS style sheet. If index is greater than or equal to the number of rules in the list, this returns null.

index of type unsigned long

Index into the collection

CSSRule

The style rule at the index position in the CSSRuleList, or null if that is not a valid index.

The CSSStyleSheet interface is a concrete interface used to represent a CSS style sheet i.e., a style sheet whose content type is "text/css".

readonly attribute CSSRuleList

cssRules

The list of all CSS rules contained within the style sheet. This includes both rule sets and at-rules.

readonly attribute CSSRule

ownerRule

If this style sheet comes from an @import rule, the ownerRule attribute will contain the CSSImportRule. In that case, the ownerNode attribute in the StyleSheet interface will be null. If the style sheet comes from an element or a processing instruction, the ownerRule attribute will be null and the ownerNode attribute will contain the Node.

void

deleteRule(in unsigned long index)

Used to delete a rule from the style sheet.

index of type unsigned long

The index within the style sheet's rule list of the rule to remove.

DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR

Raised if the specified index does not correspond to a rule in the style sheet's rule list.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this style sheet is readonly.

unsigned long

insertRule(in DOMString rule, in unsigned long index)

Used to insert a new rule into the style sheet. The new rule now becomes part of the cascade.

rule of type DOMString

The parsable text representing the rule. For rule sets this contains both the selector and the style declaration. For at-rules, this specifies both the at-identifier and the rule content.

index of type unsigned long

The index within the style sheet's rule list of the rule before which to insert the specified rule. If the specified index is equal to the length of the style sheet's rule collection, the rule will be added to the end of the style sheet.

unsigned long

The index within the style sheet's rule collection of the newly inserted rule.

DOMException HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR

Raised if the rule cannot be inserted at the specified index e.g. if an @import rule is inserted after a standard rule set or other at-rule.

The CSSValueList interface provides the abstraction of an ordered collection of CSS values.

Some properties allow an empty list into their syntax. In that case, these properties take the none identifier. So, an empty list means that the property has the value none.

The items in the CSSValueList are accessible via an integral index, starting from 0.

readonly attribute unsigned long

length

The number of CSSValues in the list. The range of valid values of the indices is 0 to length-1 inclusive.

CSSValue

item(in unsigned long index)

Used to retrieve a CSSValue by ordinal index. The order in this collection represents the order of the values in the CSS style property. If index is greater than or equal to the number of values in the list, this returns null.

index of type unsigned long

Index into the collection.

CSSValue

The CSSValue at the index position in the CSSValueList, or null if that is not a valid index.

The Document interface represents the entire HTML or XML document. Conceptually, it is the root of the document tree, and provides the primary access to the document's data.

Since elements, text nodes, comments, processing instructions, etc. cannot exist outside the context of a Document, the Document interface also contains the factory methods needed to create these objects. The Node objects created have a ownerDocument attribute which associates them with the Document within whose context they were created.

readonly attribute DocumentType

doctype

The Document Type Declaration (see DocumentType) associated with this document. For XML documents without a document type declaration this returns null. For HTML documents, a DocumentType object may be returned, independently of the presence or absence of document type declaration in the HTML document.

This provides direct access to the DocumentType node, child node of this Document. This node can be set at document creation time and later changed through the use of child nodes manipulation methods, such as Node.insertBefore, or Node.replaceChild. Note, however, that while some implementations may instantiate different types of Document objects supporting additional features than the "Core", such as "HTML" [DOM Level 2 HTML], based on the DocumentType specified at creation time, changing it afterwards is very unlikely to result in a change of the features supported.

readonly attribute Element

documentElement

This is a convenience attribute that allows direct access to the child node that is the document element of the document.

attribute DOMString

documentURI

The location of the document or null if undefined or if the Document was created using DOMImplementation.createDocument. No lexical checking is performed when setting this attribute; this could result in a null value returned when using Node.baseURI.

Beware that when the Document supports the feature "HTML" [DOM Level 2 HTML], the href attribute of the HTML BASE element takes precedence over this attribute when computing Node.baseURI.

readonly attribute DOMConfiguration

domConfig

The configuration used when Document.normalizeDocument() is invoked.

readonly attribute DOMImplementation

implementation

The DOMImplementation object that handles this document. A DOM application may use objects from multiple implementations.

readonly attribute DOMString

inputEncoding

An attribute specifying the encoding used for this document at the time of the parsing. This is null when it is not known, such as when the Document was created in memory.

attribute boolean

strictErrorChecking

An attribute specifying whether error checking is enforced or not. When set to false, the implementation is free to not test every possible error case normally defined on DOM operations, and not raise any DOMException on DOM operations or report errors while using Document.normalizeDocument(). In case of error, the behavior is undefined. This attribute is true by default.

readonly attribute DOMString

xmlEncoding

An attribute specifying, as part of the XML declaration, the encoding of this document. This is null when unspecified or when it is not known, such as when the Document was created in memory.

attribute boolean

xmlStandalone

An attribute specifying, as part of the XML declaration, whether this document is standalone. This is false when unspecified.

No verification is done on the value when setting this attribute. Applications should use Document.normalizeDocument() with the "validate" parameter to verify if the value matches the validity constraint for standalone document declaration as defined in [XML 1.0].

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

Raised if this document does not support the "XML" feature.

attribute DOMString

xmlVersion

An attribute specifying, as part of the XML declaration, the version number of this document. If there is no declaration and if this document supports the "XML" feature, the value is "1.0". If this document does not support the "XML" feature, the value is always null. Changing this attribute will affect methods that check for invalid characters in XML names. Application should invoke Document.normalizeDocument() in order to check for invalid characters in the Nodes that are already part of this Document.

DOM applications may use the DOMImplementation.hasFeature(feature, version) method with parameter values "XMLVersion" and "1.0" (respectively) to determine if an implementation supports [XML 1.0]. DOM applications may use the same method with parameter values "XMLVersion" and "1.1" (respectively) to determine if an implementation supports [XML 1.1]. In both cases, in order to support XML, an implementation must also support the "XML" feature defined in this specification. Document objects supporting a version of the "XMLVersion" feature must not raise a NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR exception for the same version number when using Document.xmlVersion.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

Raised if the version is set to a value that is not supported by this Document or if this document does not support the "XML" feature.

Node

adoptNode (in Node source)

Attempts to adopt a node from another document to this document. If supported, it changes the ownerDocument of the source node, its children, as well as the attached attribute nodes if there are any. If the source node has a parent it is first removed from the child list of its parent. This effectively allows moving a subtree from one document to another (unlike importNode() which create a copy of the source node instead of moving it). When it fails, applications should use Document.importNode() instead. Note that if the adopted node is already part of this document (i.e. the source and target document are the same), this method still has the effect of removing the source node from the child list of its parent, if any. The following list describes the specifics for each type of node.

The ownerElement attribute is set to null and the specified flag is set to true on the adopted Attr. The descendants of the source Attr are recursively adopted.

DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE

The descendants of the source node are recursively adopted.

DOCUMENT_NODE

Document nodes cannot be adopted.

DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE

DocumentType nodes cannot be adopted.

ELEMENT_NODE

Specified attribute nodes of the source element are adopted. Default attributes are discarded, though if the document being adopted into defines default attributes for this element name, those are assigned. The descendants of the source element are recursively adopted.

ENTITY_NODE

Entity nodes cannot be adopted.

ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE

Only the EntityReference node itself is adopted, the descendants are discarded, since the source and destination documents might have defined the entity differently. If the document being imported into provides a definition for this entity name, its value is assigned.

Since it does not create new nodes unlike the Document.importNode() method, this method does not raise an INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR exception, and applications should use the Document.normalizeDocument() method to check if an imported name is not an XML name according to the XML version in use.

source of type Node

The node to move into this document.

Node

The adopted node, or null if this operation fails, such as when the source node comes from a different implementation.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

Raised if the source node is of type DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT_TYPE.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised when the source node is readonly.

Attr

createAttribute (in DOMString name)

Creates an Attr of the given name. Note that the Attr instance can then be set on an Element using the setAttributeNode method.

To create an attribute with a qualified name and namespace URI, use the createAttributeNS method.

name of type DOMString

The name of the attribute.

Attr

A new Attr object with the nodeName attribute set to name, and localName, prefix, and namespaceURI set to null. The value of the attribute is the empty string.

DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR

Raised if the specified name is not an XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute.

Raised if the specified qualifiedName is not an XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute.

DOMException NAMESPACE_ERR

Raised if the qualifiedName is a malformed qualified name, if the qualifiedName has a prefix and the namespaceURI is null, if the qualifiedName has a prefix that is "xml" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace", if the qualifiedName or its prefix is "xmlns" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/", or if the namespaceURI is "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/" and neither the qualifiedName nor its prefix is "xmlns".

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

Always thrown if the current document does not support the "XML" feature, since namespaces were defined by XML.

CDATASection

createCDATASection (in DOMString data)

Creates a CDATASection node whose value is the specified string.

data of type DOMString

The data for the CDATASection contents.

CDATASection

The new CDATASection object.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

Raised if this document is an HTML document.

Comment

createComment (in DOMString data)

Creates a Comment node given the specified string.

data of type DOMString

The data for the node.

Comment

The new Comment object.

DocumentFragment

createDocumentFragment()

Creates an empty DocumentFragment object.

DocumentFragment

A new DocumentFragment.

Element

createElement (in DOMString tagName)

Creates an element of the type specified. Note that the instance returned implements the Element interface, so attributes can be specified directly on the returned object.

In addition, if there are known attributes with default values, Attr nodes representing them are automatically created and attached to the element.

To create an element with a qualified name and namespace URI, use the createElementNS method.

tagName of type DOMString

The name of the element type to instantiate. For XML, this is case-sensitive, otherwise it depends on the case-sensitivity of the markup language in use. In that case, the name is mapped to the canonical form of that markup by the DOM implementation.

Element

A new Element object with the nodeName attribute set to tagName, and localName, prefix, and namespaceURI set to null.

DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR

Raised if the specified name is not an XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute.

Raised if the specified qualifiedName is not an XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute.

DOMException NAMESPACE_ERR

Raised if the qualifiedName is a malformed qualified name, if the qualifiedName has a prefix and the namespaceURI is null, or if the qualifiedName has a prefix that is "xml" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace" [XML Namespaces], or if the qualifiedName or its prefix is "xmlns" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/", or if the namespaceURI is "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/" and neither the qualifiedName nor its prefix is "xmlns".

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

Always thrown if the current document does not support the "XML" feature, since namespaces were defined by XML.

EntityReference

createEntityReference (in DOMString name)

Creates an EntityReference object. In addition, if the referenced entity is known, the child list of the EntityReference node is made the same as that of the corresponding Entity node.

If any descendant of the Entity node has an unbound namespace prefix, the corresponding descendant of the created EntityReference node is also unbound; (its namespaceURI is null). The DOM Level 2 and 3 do not support any mechanism to resolve namespace prefixes in this case.

name of type DOMString

The name of the entity to reference. Unlike Document.createElementNS or Document.createAttributeNS, no namespace well-formed checking is done on the entity name. Applications should invoke Document.normalizeDocument() with the parameter "namespaces" set to true in order to ensure that the entity name is namespace well-formed.

EntityReference

The new EntityReference object.

DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR

Raised if the specified name is not an XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

Raised if this document is an HTML document.

ProcessingInstruction

createProcessingInstruction (in DOMString target, in DOMString data)

Creates a ProcessingInstruction node given the specified name and data strings.

target of type DOMString

The target part of the processing instruction. Unlike Document.createElementNS or Document.createAttributeNS, no namespace well-formed checking is done on the target name. Applications should invoke Document.normalizeDocument() with the parameter "namespaces" set to true in order to ensure that the target name is namespace well-formed.

data of type DOMString

The data for the node.

ProcessingInstruction

The new ProcessingInstruction object.

DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR

Raised if the specified target is not an XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

Raised if this document is an HTML document.

Text

createTextNode (in DOMString data)

Creates a Text node given the specified string.

data of type DOMString

The data for the node.

Text

The new Text object.

Element

getElementById (in DOMString elementId)

Returns the Element that has an ID attribute with the given value. If no such element exists, this returns null. If more than one element has an ID attribute with that value, what is returned is undefined.

The DOM implementation is expected to use the attribute Attr.isId to determine if an attribute is of type ID.

Attributes with the name "ID" or "id" are not of type ID unless so defined.

elementId of type DOMString

The unique id value for an element.

Element

The matching element or null if there is none.

NodeList

getElementsByTagName (in DOMString tagname)

Returns a NodeList of all the Elements in document order with a given tag name and are contained in the document.

tagname of type DOMString

The name of the tag to match on. The special value "*" matches all tags. For XML, the tagname parameter is case-sensitive, otherwise it depends on the case-sensitivity of the markup language in use.

Returns a NodeList of all the Elements with a given local name and namespace URI in document order.

namespaceURI of type DOMString

The namespace URI of the elements to match on. The special value "*" matches all namespaces.

localName of type DOMString

The local name of the elements to match on. The special value "*" matches all local names.

NodeList

A new NodeList object containing all the matched Elements.

Node

importNode (in Node importedNode, in boolean deep)

Imports a node from another document to this document, without altering or removing the source node from the original document; this method creates a new copy of the source node. The returned node has no parent; (parentNode is null).

For all nodes, importing a node creates a node object owned by the importing document, with attribute values identical to the source node's nodeName and nodeType, plus the attributes related to namespaces (prefix, localName, and namespaceURI). As in the cloneNode operation, the source node is not altered. User data associated to the imported node is not carried over. However, if any UserDataHandlers has been specified along with the associated data these handlers will be called with the appropriate parameters before this method returns.

Additional information is copied as appropriate to the nodeType, attempting to mirror the behavior expected if a fragment of XML or HTML source was copied from one document to another, recognizing that the two documents may have different DTDs in the XML case. The following list describes the specifics for each type of node.

The ownerElement attribute is set to null and the specified flag is set to true on the generated Attr. The descendants of the source Attr are recursively imported and the resulting nodes reassembled to form the corresponding subtree. Note that the deep parameter has no effect on Attr nodes; they always carry their children with them when imported.

DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE

If the deep option was set to true, the descendants of the source DocumentFragment are recursively imported and the resulting nodes reassembled under the imported DocumentFragment to form the corresponding subtree. Otherwise, this simply generates an empty DocumentFragment.

DOCUMENT_NODE

Document nodes cannot be imported.

DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE

DocumentType nodes cannot be imported.

ELEMENT_NODE

Specified attribute nodes of the source element are imported, and the generated Attr nodes are attached to the generated Element. Default attributes are not copied, though if the document being imported into defines default attributes for this element name, those are assigned. If the importNode deep parameter was set to true, the descendants of the source element are recursively imported and the resulting nodes reassembled to form the corresponding subtree.

ENTITY_NODE

Entity nodes can be imported, however in the current release of the DOM the DocumentType is readonly. Ability to add these imported nodes to a DocumentType will be considered for addition to a future release of the DOM. On import, the publicId, systemId, and notationName attributes are copied. If a deep import is requested, the descendants of the the source Entity are recursively imported and the resulting nodes reassembled to form the corresponding subtree.

ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE

Only the EntityReference itself is copied, even if a deep import is requested, since the source and destination documents might have defined the entity differently. If the document being imported into provides a definition for this entity name, its value is assigned.

NOTATION_NODE

Notation nodes can be imported, however in the current release of the DOM the DocumentType is readonly. Ability to add these imported nodes to a DocumentType will be considered for addition to a future release of the DOM. On import, the publicId and systemId attributes are copied. Note that the deep parameter has no effect on this type of nodes since they cannot have any children.

PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE

The imported node copies its target and data values from those of the source node. Note that the deep parameter has no effect on this type of nodes since they cannot have any children.

TEXT_NODE, CDATA_SECTION_NODE, COMMENT_NODE

These three types of nodes inheriting from CharacterData copy their data and length attributes from those of the source node. Note that the deep parameter has no effect on these types of nodes since they cannot have any children.

importedNode of type Node

The node to import.

deep of type boolean

If true, recursively import the subtree under the specified node; if false, import only the node itself, as explained above. This has no effect on nodes that cannot have any children, and on Attr, and EntityReference nodes.

Node

The imported node that belongs to this Document.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

Raised if the type of node being imported is not supported.

DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR

Raised if one of the imported names is not an XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute. This may happen when importing an XML 1.1 [XML 1.1] element into an XML 1.0 document, for instance.

void

normalizeDocument()

This method acts as if the document was going through a save and load cycle, putting the document in a "normal" form. As a consequence, this method updates the replacement tree of EntityReference nodes and normalizes Text nodes, as defined in the method Node.normalize().

Otherwise, the actual result depends on the features being set on the Document.domConfig object and governing what operations actually take place. Noticeably this method could also make the document namespace well-formed according to the algorithm described in Namespace Normalization, check the character normalization, remove the CDATASection nodes, etc.

Mutation events, when supported, are generated to reflect the changes occurring on the document.

If errors occur during the invocation of this method, such as an attempt to update a read-only node or a Node.nodeName contains an invalid character according to the XML version in use, errors or warnings (DOMError.SEVERITY_ERROR or DOMError.SEVERITY_WARNING) will be reported using the DOMErrorHandler object associated with the "error-handler" parameter. Note this method might also report fatal errors (DOMError.SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR) if an implementation cannot recover from an error.

When possible this simply changes the name of the given node, otherwise this creates a new node with the specified name and replaces the existing node with the new node as described below.

If simply changing the name of the given node is not possible, the following operations are performed: a new node is created, any registered event listener is registered on the new node, any user data attached to the old node is removed from that node, the old node is removed from its parent if it has one, the children are moved to the new node, if the renamed node is an Element its attributes are moved to the new node, the new node is inserted at the position the old node used to have in its parent's child nodes list if it has one, the user data that was attached to the old node is attached to the new node.

When the node being renamed is an Element only the specified attributes are moved, default attributes originated from the DTD are updated according to the new element name. In addition, the implementation may update default attributes from other schemas. Applications should use Document.normalizeDocument() to guarantee these attributes are up-to-date.

When the node being renamed is an Attr that is attached to an Element, the node is first removed from the Element attributes map. Then, once renamed, either by modifying the existing node or creating a new one as described above, it is put back.

In addition,

a user data event NODE_RENAMED is fired,

when the implementation supports the feature "MutationNameEvents", each mutation operation involved in this method fires the appropriate event, and in the end the event {http://www.w3.org/2001/xml-events, DOMElementNameChanged} or {http://www.w3.org/2001/xml-events, DOMAttributeNameChanged} is fired.

n of type Node

The node to rename.

namespaceURI of type DOMString

The new namespace URI.

qualifiedName of type DOMString

The new qualified name.

Node

The renamed node. This is either the specified node or the new node that was created to replace the specified node.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

Raised when the type of the specified node is neither ELEMENT_NODE nor ATTRIBUTE_NODE, or if the implementation does not support the renaming of the document element.

DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR

Raised if the new qualified name is not an XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute.

DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR

Raised when the specified node was created from a different document than this document.

DOMException NAMESPACE_ERR

Raised if the qualifiedName is a malformed qualified name, if the qualifiedName has a prefix and the namespaceURI is null, or if the qualifiedName has a prefix that is "xml" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace" [XML Namespaces]. Also raised, when the node being renamed is an attribute, if the qualifiedName, or its prefix, is "xmlns" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/".

The getOverrideStyle method provides a mechanism through which a DOM author could effect immediate change to the style of an element without modifying the explicitly linked style sheets of a document or the inline style of elements in the style sheets. This style sheet comes after the author style sheet in the cascade algorithm and is called override style sheet. The override style sheet takes precedence over author style sheets. An "!important" declaration still takes precedence over a normal declaration. Override, author, and user style sheets all may contain "!important" declarations. User "!important" rules take precedence over both override and author "!important" rules, and override "!important" rules take precedence over author "!important" rules.

The expectation is that an instance of the DocumentCSS interface can be obtained by using binding-specific casting methods on an instance of the Document interface.

CSSStyleDeclaration

getOverrideStyle(in Element elt, in DOMString pseudoElt)

This method is used to retrieve the override style declaration for a specified element and a specified pseudo-element.

elt of type Element

The element whose style is to be modified. This parameter cannot be null.

DocumentFragment is a "lightweight" or "minimal" Document object. It is very common to want to be able to extract a portion of a document's tree or to create a new fragment of a document. Imagine implementing a user command like cut or rearranging a document by moving fragments around. It is desirable to have an object which can hold such fragments and it is quite natural to use a Node for this purpose. While it is true that a Document object could fulfill this role, a Document object can potentially be a heavyweight object, depending on the underlying implementation. What is really needed for this is a very lightweight object. DocumentFragment is such an object.

Furthermore, various operations -- such as inserting nodes as children of another Node -- may take DocumentFragment objects as arguments; this results in all the child nodes of the DocumentFragment being moved to the child list of this node.

The children of a DocumentFragment node are zero or more nodes representing the tops of any sub-trees defining the structure of the document. DocumentFragment nodes do not need to be well-formed XML documents (although they do need to follow the rules imposed upon well-formed XML parsed entities, which can have multiple top nodes). For example, a DocumentFragment might have only one child and that child node could be a Text node. Such a structure model represents neither an HTML document nor a well-formed XML document.

When a DocumentFragment is inserted into a Document (or indeed any other Node that may take children) the children of the DocumentFragment and not the DocumentFragment itself are inserted into the Node. This makes the DocumentFragment very useful when the user wishes to create nodes that are siblings; the DocumentFragment acts as the parent of these nodes so that the user can use the standard methods from the Node interface, such as Node.insertBefore and Node.appendChild.

The DocumentStyle interface provides a mechanism by which the style sheets embedded in a document can be retrieved. The expectation is that an instance of the DocumentStyle interface can be obtained by using binding-specific casting methods on an instance of the Document interface.

readonly attribute StyleSheetList

styleSheets

A list containing all the style sheets explicitly linked into or embedded in a document. For HTML documents, this includes external style sheets, included via the HTML LINK element, and inline STYLE elements. In XML, this includes external style sheets, included via style sheet processing instructions (see [XML-StyleSheet]).

Each Document has a doctype attribute whose value is either null or a DocumentType object. The DocumentType interface in the DOM Core provides an interface to the list of entities that are defined for the document, and little else because the effect of namespaces and the various XML schema efforts on DTD representation are not clearly understood as of this writing.

The DOMConfiguration interface represents the configuration of a document and maintains a table of recognized parameters. Using the configuration, it is possible to change Document.normalizeDocument() behavior, such as replacing the CDATASection nodes with Text nodes or specifying the type of the schema that must be used when the validation of the Document is requested. DOMConfiguration objects are also used in [DOM Level 3 Load and Save] in the DOMParser and DOMSerializer interfaces.

The parameter names used by the DOMConfiguration object are defined throughout the DOM Level 3 specifications. Names are case-insensitive. To avoid possible conflicts, as a convention, names referring to parameters defined outside the DOM specification should be made unique. Because parameters are exposed as properties in the ECMAScript Language Binding, names are recommended to follow the section "5.16 Identifiers" of [Unicode] with the addition of the character '-' (HYPHEN-MINUS) but it is not enforced by the DOM implementation. DOM Level 3 Core Implementations are required to recognize all parameters defined in this specification. Some parameter values may also be required to be supported by the implementation. Refer to the definition of the parameter to know if a value must be supported or not.

Canonicalize the document according to the rules specified in [Canonical XML], such as removing the DocumentType node (if any) from the tree, or removing superfluous namespace declarations from each element. Note that this is limited to what can be represented in the DOM; in particular, there is no way to specify the order of the attributes in the DOM. In addition,

Setting this parameter to true will also set the state of the parameters listed below. Later changes to the state of one of those parameters will revert "canonical-form" back to false.

Other parameters are not changed unless explicitly specified in the description of the parameters.

false

[required] (default)

Do not canonicalize the document.

"cdata-sections"

true

[required] (default)

Keep CDATASection nodes in the document.

false

[required]

Transform CDATASection nodes in the document into Text nodes. The new Text node is then combined with any adjacent Text node.

"check-character-normalization"

true

[optional]

Check if the characters in the document are fully normalized, as defined in appendix B of [XML 1.1]. When a sequence of characters is encountered that fails normalization checking, an error with the DOMError.type equals to "check-character-normalization-failure" is issued.

false

[required] (default)

Do not check if characters are normalized.

"comments"

true

[required] (default)

Keep Comment nodes in the document.

false

[required]

Discard Comment nodes in the document.

"datatype-normalization"

true

[optional]

Expose schema normalized values in the tree, such as XML Schema normalized values in the case of XML Schema. Since this parameter requires to have schema information, the "validate" parameter will also be set to true. Having this parameter activated when "validate" is false has no effect and no schema-normalization will happen.

Since the document contains the result of the XML 1.0 processing, this parameter does not apply to attribute value normalization as defined in section 3.3.3 of [XML 1.0] and is only meant for schema languages other than Document Type Definition (DTD).

false

[required] (default)

Do not perform schema normalization on the tree.

"element-content-whitespace"

true

[required] (default)

Keep all whitespaces in the document.

false

[optional]

Discard all Text nodes that contain whitespaces in element content, as described in [element content whitespace]. The implementation is expected to use the attribute Text.isElementContentWhitespace to determine if a Text node should be discarded or not.

"entities"

true

[required] (default)

Keep EntityReference nodes in the document.

false

[required]

Remove all EntityReference nodes from the document, putting the entity expansions directly in their place. Text nodes are normalized, as defined in Node.normalize. Only unexpanded entity references are kept in the document.

This parameter does not affect Entity nodes.

"error-handler"

[required]

Contains a DOMErrorHandler object. If an error is encountered in the document, the implementation will call back the DOMErrorHandler registered using this parameter. The implementation may provide a default DOMErrorHandler object.

When called, DOMError.relatedData will contain the closest node to where the error occurred. If the implementation is unable to determine the node where the error occurs, DOMError.relatedData will contain the Document node. Mutations to the document from within an error handler will result in implementation dependent behavior.

"infoset"

true

[required]

Keep in the document the information defined in the XML Information Set [XML Information Set].

This forces the following parameters to false: "validate-if-schema", "entities", "datatype-normalization", "cdata-sections".

This forces the following parameters to true: "namespace-declarations", "well-formed", "element-content-whitespace", "comments", "namespaces".

Other parameters are not changed unless explicitly specified in the description of the parameters.

Note that querying this parameter with getParameter returns true only if the individual parameters specified above are appropriately set.

false

Setting infoset to false has no effect.

"namespaces"

true

[required] (default)

Perform the namespace processing as defined in Namespace Normalization.

false

[optional]

Do not perform the namespace processing.

"namespace-declarations"

This parameter has no effect if the parameter "namespaces" is set to false.

true

[required] (default)

Include namespace declaration attributes, specified or defaulted from the schema, in the document. See also the sections "Declaring Namespaces" in [XML Namespaces] and [XML Namespaces 1.1].

false

[required]

Discard all namespace declaration attributes. The namespace prefixes (Node.prefix) are retained even if this parameter is set to false.

"normalize-characters"

true

[optional]

Fully normalized the characters in the document as defined in appendix B of [XML 1.1].

false

[required] (default)

Do not perform character normalization.

"schema-location"

[optional]

Represent a DOMString object containing a list of URIs, separated by whitespaces (characters matching the nonterminal production S defined in section 2.3 [XML 1.0]), that represents the schemas against which validation should occur, i.e. the current schema. The types of schemas referenced in this list must match the type specified with schema-type, otherwise the behavior of an implementation is undefined.

The schemas specified using this property take precedence to the schema information specified in the document itself. For namespace aware schema, if a schema specified using this property and a schema specified in the document instance (i.e. using the schemaLocation attribute) in a schema document (i.e. using schema import mechanisms) share the same targetNamespace, the schema specified by the user using this property will be used. If two schemas specified using this property share the same targetNamespace or have no namespace, the behavior is implementation dependent.

If no location has been provided, this parameter is null.

The "schema-location" parameter is ignored unless the "schema-type" parameter value is set. It is strongly recommended that Document.documentURI will be set so that an implementation can successfully resolve any external entities referenced.

"schema-type"

[optional]

Represent a DOMString object containing an absolute URI and representing the type of the schema language used to validate a document against. Note that no lexical checking is done on the absolute URI.

If this parameter is not set, a default value may be provided by the implementation, based on the schema languages supported and on the schema language used at load time. If no value is provided, this parameter is null.

For XML Schema [XML Schema Part 1], applications must use the value "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema". For XML DTD [XML 1.0], applications must use the value "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml". Other schema languages are outside the scope of the W3C and therefore should recommend an absolute URI in order to use this method.

"split-cdata-sections"

true

[required] (default)

Split CDATA sections containing the CDATA section termination marker ']]>'. When a CDATA section is split a warning is issued with a DOMError.type equals to "cdata-sections-splitted" and DOMError.relatedData equals to the first CDATASection node in document order resulting from the split.

false

[required]

Signal an error if a CDATASection contains an unrepresentable character.

"validate"

true

[optional]

Require the validation against a schema (i.e. XML schema, DTD, any other type or representation of schema) of the document as it is being normalized as defined by [XML 1.0]. If validation errors are found, or no schema was found, the error handler is notified. Schema-normalized values will not be exposed according to the schema in used unless the parameter "datatype-normalization" is true.

This parameter will reevaluate:

Attribute nodes with Attr.specified equals to false, as specified in the description of the Attr interface;

The value of the attribute Text.isElementContentWhitespace for all Text nodes;

The value of the attribute Attr.isId for all Attr nodes;

The attributes Element.schemaTypeInfo and Attr.schemaTypeInfo.

"validate-if-schema" and "validate" are mutually exclusive, setting one of them to true will set the other one to false. Applications should also consider setting the parameter "well-formed" to true, which is the default for that option, when validating the document.

false

[required] (default)

Do not accomplish schema processing, including the internal subset processing. Default attribute values information are kept. Note that validation might still happen if "validate-if-schema" is true.

"validate-if-schema"

true

[optional]

Enable validation only if a declaration for the document element can be found in a schema (independently of where it is found, i.e. XML schema, DTD, or any other type or representation of schema). If validation is enabled, this parameter has the same behavior as the parameter "validate" set to true.

"validate-if-schema" and "validate" are mutually exclusive, setting one of them to true will set the other one to false.

false

[required] (default)

No schema processing should be performed if the document has a schema, including internal subset processing. Default attribute values information are kept. Note that validation must still happen if "validate" is true.

"well-formed"

true

[required] (default)

Check if all nodes are XML well formed according to the XML version in use in Document.xmlVersion:

check if the attribute Node.nodeName contains invalid characters according to its node type and generate a DOMError of type "wf-invalid-character-in-node-name", with a DOMError.SEVERITY_ERROR severity, if necessary;

check if the text content inside Attr, Element, Comment, Text, CDATASection nodes for invalid characters and generate a DOMError of type "wf-invalid-character", with a DOMError.SEVERITY_ERROR severity, if necessary;

check if the data inside ProcessingInstruction nodes for invalid characters and generate a DOMError of type "wf-invalid-character", with a DOMError.SEVERITY_ERROR severity, if necessary;

false

[optional]

Do not check for XML well-formedness.

The resolution of the system identifiers associated with entities is done using Document.documentURI. However, when the feature "LS" defined in [DOM Level 3 Load and Save] is supported by the DOM implementation, the parameter "resource-resolver" can also be used on DOMConfiguration objects attached to Document nodes. If this parameter is set, Document.normalizeDocument() will invoke the resource resolver instead of using Document.documentURI.

readonly attribute DOMStringList

parameterNames

The list of the parameters supported by this DOMConfiguration object and for which at least one value can be set by the application. Note that this list can also contain parameter names defined outside this specification.

boolean

canSetParameter (in DOMString name, in DOMUserData value)

Check if setting a parameter to a specific value is supported.

name of type DOMString

The name of the parameter to check.

value of type DOMUserData

An object. if null, the returned value is true.

boolean

true if the parameter could be successfully set to the specified value, or false if the parameter is not recognized or the requested value is not supported. This does not change the current value of the parameter itself.

DOMUserData

getParameter(in DOMString name)

Return the value of a parameter if known.

name of type DOMString

The name of the parameter.

DOMUserData

The current object associated with the specified parameter or null if no object has been associated or if the parameter is not supported.

DOMException NOT_FOUND_ERR

Raised when the parameter name is not recognized.

void

setParameter (in DOMString name, in DOMUserData value)

Set the value of a parameter.

name of type DOMString

The name of the parameter to set.

value of type DOMString

The new value or null if the user wishes to unset the parameter. While the type of the value parameter is defined as DOMUserData, the object type must match the type defined by the definition of the parameter. For example, if the parameter is "error-handler", the value must be of type DOMErrorHandler.

DOMException NOT_FOUND_ERR

Raised when the parameter name is not recognized.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

Raised when the parameter name is recognized but the requested value cannot be set.

DOMException TYPE_MISMATCH_ERR

Raised if the value type for this parameter name is incompatible with the expected value type.

The severity of the error described by the DOMError is error. A SEVERITY_ERROR may not cause the processing to stop if the error can be recovered, unless DOMErrorHandler.handleError() returns false.

const unsigned short

SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR

= 3;

The severity of the error described by the DOMError is fatal error. A SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR will cause the normal processing to stop. The return value of DOMErrorHandler.handleError() is ignored unless the implementation chooses to continue, in which case the behavior becomes undefined.

const unsigned short

SEVERITY_WARNING

= 1;

The severity of the error described by the DOMError is warning. A SEVERITY_WARNING will not cause the processing to stop, unless DOMErrorHandler.handleError() returns false.

readonly attribute DOMLocator

location

The location of the error.

readonly attribute DOMString

message

An implementation specific string describing the error that occurred.

readonly attribute DOMObject

relatedData

The related DOMError.type dependent data if any.

readonly attribute DOMObject

relatedException

The related platform dependent exception if any.

readonly attribute unsigned short

severity

The severity of the error, either SEVERITY_WARNING, SEVERITY_ERROR, or SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR.

return

readonly attribute DOMString

A DOMString indicating which related data is expected in relatedData. Users should refer to the specification of the error in order to find its DOMString type and relatedData definitions if any.

As an example, Document.normalizeDocument() does generate warnings when the "split-cdata-sections" parameter is in use. Therefore, the method generates a SEVERITY_WARNING with type "cdata-sections-splitted" and the first CDATASection node in document order resulting from the split is returned by the relatedData attribute.

DOMErrorHandler is a callback interface that the DOM implementation can call when reporting errors that happens while processing XML data, or when doing some other processing (e.g. validating a document). A DOMErrorHandler object can be attached to a Document using the "error-handler" on the DOMConfiguration interface. If more than one error needs to be reported during an operation, the sequence and numbers of the errors passed to the error handler are implementation dependent.

The application that is using the DOM implementation is expected to implement this interface.

boolean

handleError (in DOMError error)

This method is called on the error handler when an error occurs.

If an exception is thrown from this method, it is considered to be equivalent of returning true.

error of type DOMString

The error object that describes the error. This object may be reused by the DOM implementation across multiple calls to the handleError method.

boolean

If the handleError method returns false, the DOM implementation should stop the current processing when possible. If the method returns true, the processing may continue depending on DOMError.severity.

DOM operations only raise exceptions in "exceptional" circumstances, i.e., when an operation is impossible to perform (either for logical reasons, because data is lost, or because the implementation has become unstable). In general, DOM methods return specific error values in ordinary processing situations, such as out-of-bound errors when using NodeList.

Implementations should raise other exceptions under other circumstances. For example, implementations should raise an implementation-dependent exception if a null argument is passed when null was not expected.

Some languages and object systems do not support the concept of exceptions. For such systems, error conditions may be indicated using native error reporting mechanisms. For some bindings, for example, methods may return error codes similar to those listed in the corresponding method descriptions.

const unsigned short

DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR

= 2;

If the specified range of text does not fit into a DOMString.

const unsigned short

HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR

= 3;

If any Node is inserted somewhere it doesn't belong.

const unsigned short

INDEX_SIZE_ERR

= 1;

If index or size is negative, or greater than the allowed value.

const unsigned short

INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR

= 10;

If an attempt is made to add an attribute that is already in use elsewhere.

const unsigned short

INVALID_ACCESS_ERR

= 15;

If a parameter or an operation is not supported by the underlying object.

const unsigned short

INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR

= 5;

If an invalid or illegal character is specified, such as in an XML name.

const unsigned short

INVALID_MODIFICATION_ERR

= 13;

If an attempt is made to modify the type of the underlying object.

const unsigned short

INVALID_STATE_ERR

= 11;

If an attempt is made to use an object that is not, or is no longer, usable.

const unsigned short

NAMESPACE_ERR

= 14;

If an attempt is made to create or change an object in a way which is incorrect with regard to namespaces.

const unsigned short

NOT_FOUND_ERR

= 8;

If an attempt is made to reference a Node in a context where it does not exist.

const unsigned short

NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

= 9;

If the implementation does not support the requested type of object or operation.

const unsigned short

NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR

= 6;

If data is specified for a Node which does not support data.

const unsigned short

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

= 7;

If an attempt is made to modify an object where modifications are not allowed.

const unsigned short

SYNTAX_ERR

= 12;

If an invalid or illegal string is specified.

const unsigned short

TYPE_MISMATCH_ERR

= 17;

If the type of an object is incompatible with the expected type of the parameter associated to the object.

const unsigned short

VALIDATION_ERR

= 16;

If a call to a method such as insertBefore or removeChild would make the Node invalid with respect to "partial validity", this exception would be raised and the operation would not be done. This code is used in [DOM Level 3 Validation]. Refer to this specification for further information.

const unsigned short

WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR

= 4;

If a Node is used in a different document than the one that created it (that doesn't support it).

Creates a DOM Document object of the specified type with its document element.

Note that based on the DocumentType given to create the document, the implementation may instantiate specialized Document objects that support additional features than the "Core", such as "HTML" [DOM Level 2 HTML]. On the other hand, setting the DocumentType after the document was created makes this very unlikely to happen. Alternatively, specialized Document creation methods, such as createHTMLDocument [DOM Level 2 HTML], can be used to obtain specific types of Document objects.

namespaceURI of type DOMString

The namespace URI of the document element to create or null.

qualifiedName of type DOMString

The qualified name of the document element to be created or null.

doctype of type DocumentType

The type of document to be created or null. When doctype is not null, its Node.ownerDocument attribute is set to the document being created.

Document

A new Document object with its document element. If the NamespaceURI, qualifiedName, and doctype are null, the returned Document is empty with no document element.

DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR

Raised if the specified qualified name is not an XML name according to [XML 1.0].

DOMException NAMESPACE_ERR

Raised if the qualifiedName is malformed, if the qualifiedName has a prefix and the namespaceURI is null, or if the qualifiedName is null and the namespaceURI is different from null, or if the qualifiedName has a prefix that is "xml" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace" [XML Namespaces], or if the DOM implementation does not support the "XML" feature but a non-null namespace URI was provided, since namespaces were defined by XML.

DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR

Raised if doctype has already been used with a different document or was created from a different implementation.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).

Creates an empty DocumentType node. Entity declarations and notations are not made available. Entity reference expansions and default attribute additions do not occur.

qualifiedName of type DOMString

The qualified name of the document type to be created.

publicId of type DOMString

The external subset public identifier.

systemId of type DOMString

The external subset system identifier.

DocumentType

A new DocumentType node with Node.ownerDocument set to null.

DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR

Raised if the specified qualified name is not an XML name according to [XML 1.0].

DOMException NAMESPACE_ERR

Raised if the qualifiedName is malformed.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).

DOMObject

getFeature (in DOMString feature, in DOMString version)

This method returns a specialized object which implements the specialized APIs of the specified feature and version, as specified in DOM Features.

The specialized object may also be obtained by using binding-specific casting methods but is not necessarily expected to, as discussed in Mixed DOM Implementations. This method also allow the implementation to provide specialized objects which do not support the DOMImplementation interface.

feature of type DOMString

The name of the feature requested. Note that any plus sign "+" prepended to the name of the feature will be ignored since it is not significant in the context of this method.

version of type DOMString

This is the version number of the feature to test.

DOMObject

Returns an object which implements the specialized APIs of the specified feature and version, if any, or null if there is no object which implements interfaces associated with that feature. If the DOMObject returned by this method implements the DOMImplementation interface, it must delegate to the primary core DOMImplementation and not return results inconsistent with the primary core DOMImplementation such as hasFeature, getFeature, etc.

boolean

hasFeature (in DOMString feature, in DOMString version)

Test if the DOM implementation implements a specific feature and version, as specified in DOM Features.

feature of type DOMString

The name of the feature to test.

version of type DOMString

This is the version number of the feature to test.

boolean

true if the feature is implemented in the specified version, false otherwise.

The DOMImplementationList interface provides the abstraction of an ordered collection of DOM implementations, without defining or constraining how this collection is implemented. The items in the DOMImplementationList are accessible via an integral index, starting from 0.

readonly attribute unsigned long

length

The number of DOMImplementations in the list. The range of valid child node indices is 0 to length-1 inclusive.

DOMImplementation

item(in unsigned long index)

Returns the indexth item in the collection. If index is greater than or equal to the number of DOMImplementations in the list, this returns null.

index of type unsigned long

Index into the collection.

DOMImplementation

The DOMImplementation at the indexth position in the DOMImplementationList, or null if that is not a valid index.

This interface permits a DOM implementer to supply one or more implementations, based upon requested features and versions, as specified in DOM Features. Each implemented DOMImplementationSource object is listed in the binding-specific list of available sources so that its DOMImplementation objects are made available.

DOMImplementation

getDOMImplementation (in DOMString features)

A method to request the first DOM implementation that supports the specified features.

features of type DOMString

A string that specifies which features and versions are required. This is a space separated list in which each feature is specified by its name optionally followed by a space and a version number.
This method returns the first item of the list returned by getDOMImplementationList.
As an example, the string "XML 3.0 Traversal +Events 2.0" will request a DOM implementation that supports the module "XML" for its 3.0 version, a module that support of the "Traversal" module for any version, and the module "Events" for its 2.0 version. The module "Events" must be accessible using the method Node.getFeature() and DOMImplementation.getFeature().

DOMImplementation

The first DOM implementation that support the desired features, or null if this source has none.

DOMImplementationList

getDOMImplementationList (in DOMString features)

A method to request a list of DOM implementations that support the specified features and versions, as specified in DOM Features.

features of type DOMString

A string that specifies which features and versions are required. This is a space separated list in which each feature is specified by its name optionally followed by a space and a version number. This is something like: "XML 3.0 Traversal +Events 2.0"

The DOMString type is used to store [Unicode] characters as a sequence of 16-bit units using UTF-16 as defined in [Unicode] and Amendment 1 of [ISO/IEC 10646].

Characters are fully normalized as defined in appendix B of [XML 1.1] if:

the parameter "normalize-characters" was set to true while loading the document or the document was certified as defined in [XML 1.1];

the parameter "normalize-characters" was set to true while using the method Document.normalizeDocument(), or while using the method Node.normalize();

Note that, with the exceptions of Document.normalizeDocument() and Node.normalize(), manipulating characters using DOM methods does not guarantee to preserve a fully-normalized text.

A DOMString is a sequence of 16-bit units.

The UTF-16 encoding was chosen because of its widespread industry practice. Note that for both HTML and XML, the document character set (and therefore the notation of numeric character references) is based on UCS [ISO/IEC 10646]. A single numeric character reference in a source document may therefore in some cases correspond to two 16-bit units in a DOMString (a high surrogate and a low surrogate). For issues related to string comparisons, refer to String Comparisons in the DOM.

For Java and ECMAScript, DOMString is bound to the String type because both languages also use UTF-16 as their encoding.

As of August 2000, the OMG IDL specification ([OMG IDL]) included a wstring type. However, that definition did not meet the interoperability criteria of the DOM API since it relied on negotiation to decide the width and encoding of a character.

The Element interface represents an element in an HTML or XML document. Elements may have attributes associated with them; since the Element interface inherits from Node, the generic Node interface attribute attributes may be used to retrieve the set of all attributes for an element. There are methods on the Element interface to retrieve either an Attr object by name or an attribute value by name. In XML, where an attribute value may contain entity references, an Attr object should be retrieved to examine the possibly fairly complex sub-tree representing the attribute value. On the other hand, in HTML, where all attributes have simple string values, methods to directly access an attribute value can safely be used as a convenience.

In DOM Level 2, the method normalize is inherited from the Node interface where it was moved.

readonly attribute TypeInfo

schemaTypeInfo

The type information associated with this element.

readonly attribute DOMString

tagName

The name of the element. If Node.localName is different from null, this attribute is a qualified name. For example, in:

<elementExample id="demo">
...
</elementExample>

tagName has the value "elementExample". Note that this is case-preserving in XML, as are all of the operations of the DOM. The HTML DOM returns the tagName of an HTML element in the canonical uppercase form, regardless of the case in the source HTML document.

DOMString

getAttribute (in DOMString name)

Retrieves an attribute value by name.

name of type DOMString

The name of the attribute to retrieve.

DOMString

The Attr value as a string, or the empty string if that attribute does not have a specified or default value.

DOMString

getAttributeNS (in DOMString namespaceURI, in DOMString localName)

Retrieves an attribute value by local name and namespace URI.

Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.

namespaceURI of type DOMString

The namespace URI of the attribute to retrieve.

localName of type DOMString

The local name of the attribute to retrieve.

DOMString

The Attr value as a string, or the empty string if that attribute does not have a specified or default value.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).

Attr

getAttributeNode (in DOMString name)

Retrieves an attribute node by name.

To retrieve an attribute node by qualified name and namespace URI, use the getAttributeNodeNS method.

name of type DOMString

The name (nodeName) of the attribute to retrieve.

Attr

The Attr node with the specified name (nodeName) or null if there is no such attribute.

Returns a NodeList of all the descendant Elements with a given local name and namespace URI in document order.

namespaceURI of type DOMString

The namespace URI of the elements to match on. The special value "*" matches all namespaces.

localName of type DOMString

The local name of the elements to match on. The special value "*" matches all local names.

NodeList

A new NodeList object containing all the matched Elements.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).

boolean

hasAttribute (in DOMString name)

Returns true when an attribute with a given name is specified on this element or has a default value, false otherwise.

name of type DOMString

The name of the attribute to look for.

boolean

true if an attribute with the given name is specified on this element or has a default value, false otherwise.

boolean

hasAttributeNS (in DOMString namespaceURI, in DOMString localName)

Returns true when an attribute with a given local name and namespace URI is specified on this element or has a default value, false otherwise.

Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.

namespaceURI of type DOMString

The namespace URI of the attribute to look for.

localName of type DOMString

The local name of the attribute to look for.

boolean

true if an attribute with the given local name and namespace URI is specified or has a default value on this element, false otherwise.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).

void

removeAttribute (in DOMString name)

Removes an attribute by name. If a default value for the removed attribute is defined in the DTD, a new attribute immediately appears with the default value as well as the corresponding namespace URI, local name, and prefix when applicable. The implementation may handle default values from other schemas similarly but applications should use Document.normalizeDocument() to guarantee this information is up-to-date.

If no attribute with this name is found, this method has no effect.

To remove an attribute by local name and namespace URI, use the removeAttributeNS method.

name of type DOMString

The name of the attribute to remove.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this node is readonly.

void

removeAttributeNS (in DOMString namespaceURI, in DOMString localName)

Removes an attribute by local name and namespace URI. If a default value for the removed attribute is defined in the DTD, a new attribute immediately appears with the default value as well as the corresponding namespace URI, local name, and prefix when applicable. The implementation may handle default values from other schemas similarly but applications should use Document.normalizeDocument() to guarantee this information is up-to-date.

If no attribute with this local name and namespace URI is found, this method has no effect.

Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.

namespaceURI of type DOMString

The namespace URI of the attribute to remove.

localName of type DOMString

The local name of the attribute to remove.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this node is readonly.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).

Attr

removeAttributeNode (in Attr oldAttr)

Removes the specified attribute node. If a default value for the removed Attr node is defined in the DTD, a new node immediately appears with the default value as well as the corresponding namespace URI, local name, and prefix when applicable. The implementation may handle default values from other schemas similarly but applications should use Document.normalizeDocument() to guarantee this information is up-to-date.

oldAttr of type Attr

The Attr node to remove from the attribute list.

Attr

The Attr node that was removed.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this node is readonly.

DOMException NOT_FOUND_ERR

Raised if oldAttr is not an attribute of the element.

void

setAttribute (in DOMString name, in DOMString value)

Adds a new attribute. If an attribute with that name is already present in the element, its value is changed to be that of the value parameter. This value is a simple string; it is not parsed as it is being set. So any markup (such as syntax to be recognized as an entity reference) is treated as literal text, and needs to be appropriately escaped by the implementation when it is written out. In order to assign an attribute value that contains entity references, the user must create an Attr node plus any Text and EntityReference nodes, build the appropriate subtree, and use setAttributeNode to assign it as the value of an attribute.

To set an attribute with a qualified name and namespace URI, use the setAttributeNS method.

name of type DOMString

The name of the attribute to create or alter.

value of type DOMString

Value to set in string form.

DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR

Raised if the specified name is not an XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute.

Adds a new attribute. If an attribute with the same local name and namespace URI is already present on the element, its prefix is changed to be the prefix part of the qualifiedName, and its value is changed to be the value parameter. This value is a simple string; it is not parsed as it is being set. So any markup (such as syntax to be recognized as an entity reference) is treated as literal text, and needs to be appropriately escaped by the implementation when it is written out. In order to assign an attribute value that contains entity references, the user must create an Attr node plus any Text and EntityReference nodes, build the appropriate subtree, and use setAttributeNodeNS or setAttributeNode to assign it as the value of an attribute.

Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.

namespaceURI of type DOMString

The namespace URI of the attribute to create or alter.

qualifiedName of type DOMString

The qualified name of the attribute to create or alter.

value of type DOMString

The value to set in string form.

DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR

Raised if the specified qualified name is not an XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this node is readonly.

DOMException NAMESPACE_ERR

Raised if the qualifiedName is malformed per the Namespaces in XML specification, if the qualifiedName has a prefix and the namespaceURI is null, if the qualifiedName has a prefix that is "xml" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace", if the qualifiedName or its prefix is "xmlns" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/", or if the namespaceURI is "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/" and neither the qualifiedName nor its prefix is "xmlns".

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).

Attr

setAttributeNode (in Attr newAttr)

Adds a new attribute node. If an attribute with that name (nodeName) is already present in the element, it is replaced by the new one. Replacing an attribute node by itself has no effect.

To add a new attribute node with a qualified name and namespace URI, use the setAttributeNodeNS method.

newAttr of type Attr

The Attr node to add to the attribute list.

Attr

If the newAttr attribute replaces an existing attribute, the replaced Attr node is returned, otherwise null is returned.

DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR

Raised if newAttr was created from a different document than the one that created the element.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this node is readonly.

DOMException INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR

Raised if newAttr is already an attribute of another Element object. The DOM user must explicitly clone Attr nodes to re-use them in other elements.

Attr

setAttributeNodeNS (in Attr newAttr)

Adds a new attribute. If an attribute with that local name and that namespace URI is already present in the element, it is replaced by the new one.

Replacing an attribute node by itself has no effect.

Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.

newAttr of type Attr

The Attr node to add to the attribute list.

Attr

If the newAttr attribute replaces an existing attribute with the same local name and namespace URI, the replaced Attr node is returned, otherwise null is returned.

DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR

Raised if newAttr was created from a different document than the one that created the element.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this node is readonly.

DOMException INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR

Raised if newAttr is already an attribute of another Element object. The DOM user must explicitly clone Attr nodes to re-use them in other elements.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).

void

setIdAttribute (in DOMString name, in boolean isId)

If the parameter isId is true, this method declares the specified attribute to be a user-determined ID attribute. This affects the value of Attr.isId and the behavior of Document.getElementById, but does not change any schema that may be in use, in particular this does not affect the Attr.schemaTypeInfo of the specified Attr node. Use the value false for the parameter isId to undeclare an attribute for being a user-determined ID attribute.

To specify an attribute by local name and namespace URI, use the setIdAttributeNS method.

If the parameter isId is true, this method declares the specified attribute to be a user-determined ID attribute. This affects the value of Attr.isId and the behavior of Document.getElementById, but does not change any schema that may be in use, in particular this does not affect the Attr.schemaTypeInfo of the specified Attr node. Use the value false for the parameter isId to undeclare an attribute for being a user-determined ID attribute.

namespaceURI of type DOMString

The namespace URI of the attribute.

localName of type DOMString

The local name of the attribute.

isId of type boolean

Whether the attribute is a of type ID.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this node is readonly.

DOMException NOT_FOUND_ERR

Raised if the specified node is not an attribute of this element.

void

setIdAttributeNode (in Attr idAttr, in boolean isId)

If the parameter isId is true, this method declares the specified attribute to be a user-determined ID attribute. This affects the value of Attr.isId and the behavior of Document.getElementById, but does not change any schema that may be in use, in particular this does not affect the Attr.schemaTypeInfo of the specified Attr node. Use the value false for the parameter isId to undeclare an attribute for being a user-determined ID attribute.

Inline style information attached to elements is exposed through the style attribute. This represents the contents of the STYLE attribute for HTML elements (or elements in other schemas or DTDs which use the STYLE attribute in the same way). The expectation is that an instance of the ElementCSSInlineStyle interface can be obtained by using binding-specific casting methods on an instance of the Element interface when the element supports inline CSS style informations.

This interface represents a known entity, either parsed or unparsed, in an XML document. Note that this models the entity itself not the entity declaration.

The nodeName attribute that is inherited from Node contains the name of the entity.

An XML processor may choose to completely expand entities before the structure model is passed to the DOM; in this case there will be no EntityReference nodes in the document tree.

XML does not mandate that a non-validating XML processor read and process entity declarations made in the external subset or declared in parameter entities. This means that parsed entities declared in the external subset need not be expanded by some classes of applications, and that the replacement text of the entity may not be available. When the replacement text is available, the corresponding Entity node's child list represents the structure of that replacement value. Otherwise, the child list is empty.

DOM Level 3 does not support editing Entity nodes; if a user wants to make changes to the contents of an Entity, every related EntityReference node has to be replaced in the structure model by a clone of the Entity's contents, and then the desired changes must be made to each of those clones instead. Entity nodes and all their descendants are readonly.

An Entity node does not have any parent.

If the entity contains an unbound namespace prefix, the namespaceURI of the corresponding node in the Entity node subtree is null. The same is true for EntityReference nodes that refer to this entity, when they are created using the createEntityReference method of the Document interface.

readonly attribute DOMString

inputEncoding

An attribute specifying the encoding used for this entity at the time of parsing, when it is an external parsed entity. This is null if it an entity from the internal subset or if it is not known.

readonly attribute DOMString

notationName

For unparsed entities, the name of the notation for the entity. For parsed entities, this is null.

readonly attribute DOMString

publicId

The public identifier associated with the entity if specified, and null otherwise.

readonly attribute DOMString

systemId

The system identifier associated with the entity if specified, and null otherwise. This may be an absolute URI or not.

readonly attribute DOMString

xmlEncoding

An attribute specifying, as part of the text declaration, the encoding of this entity, when it is an external parsed entity. This is null otherwise.

readonly attribute DOMString

xmlVersion

An attribute specifying, as part of the text declaration, the version number of this entity, when it is an external parsed entity. This is null otherwise.

EntityReference nodes may be used to represent an entity reference in the tree. Note that character references and references to predefined entities are considered to be expanded by the HTML or XML processor so that characters are represented by their Unicode equivalent rather than by an entity reference. Moreover, the XML processor may completely expand references to entities while building the Document, instead of providing EntityReference nodes. If it does provide such nodes, then for an EntityReference node that represents a reference to a known entity an Entity exists, and the subtree of the EntityReference node is a copy of the Entity node subtree. However, the latter may not be true when an entity contains an unbound namespace prefix. In such a case, because the namespace prefix resolution depends on where the entity reference is, the descendants of the EntityReference node may be bound to different namespace URIs. When an EntityReference node represents a reference to an unknown entity, the node has no children and its replacement value, when used by Attr.value for example, is empty.

As for Entity nodes, EntityReference nodes and all their descendants are readonly.

EntityReference nodes may cause element content and attribute value normalization problems when, such as in XML 1.0 and XML Schema, the normalization is performed after entity reference are expanded.

An HTMLCollection is a list of nodes. An individual node may be accessed by either ordinal index or the node's name or id attributes.

Collections in the HTML DOM are assumed to be live meaning that they are automatically updated when the underlying document is changed.

readonly attribute unsigned long

length

This attribute specifies the length or size of the list.

Node

item (in unsigned long index)

This method retrieves a node specified by ordinal index. Nodes are numbered in tree order (depth-first traversal order).

index of type unsigned long

The index of the node to be fetched. The index origin is 0.

Node

The Node at the corresponding position upon success. A value of null is returned if the index is out of range.

Node

namedItem(in DOMString name)

This method retrieves a Node using a name. With [HTML 4.01] documents, it first searches for a Node with a matching id attribute. If it doesn't find one, it then searches for a Node with a matching name attribute, but only on those elements that are allowed a name attribute. With [XHTML 1.0] documents, this method only searches for Nodes with a matching id attribute. This method is case insensitive in HTML documents and case sensitive in XHTML documents.

name of type DOMString

The name of the Node to be fetched.

Node

The Node with a name or id attribute whose value corresponds to the specified string. Upon failure (e.g., no node with this name exists), returns null.

An HTMLDocument is the root of the HTML hierarchy and holds the entire content. Besides providing access to the hierarchy, it also provides some convenience methods for accessing certain sets of information from the document.

The following properties have been deprecated in favor of the corresponding ones for the BODY element:

alinkColor

background

bgColor

fgColor

linkColor

vlinkColor

In DOM Level 2, the method getElementById is inherited from the Document interface where it was moved to.

readonly attribute HTMLCollection

anchors

A collection of all the anchor (A) elements in a document with a value for the name attribute.

For reasons of backward compatibility, the returned set of anchors only contains those anchors created with the name attribute,
not those created with the id attribute. Note that in [XHTML 1.0], the name attribute (see section 4.10) has no semantics and is only present for legacy user agents:
the id attribute is used instead. Users should prefer the iterator mechanisms provided by [DOM Level 2 Traversal] instead.

readonly attribute HTMLCollection

applets

A collection of all the OBJECT elements that include applets and APPLET (deprecated) elements in a document.

attribute HTMLElement

body

The element that contains the content for the document. In documents with BODY contents, returns the BODY element. In frameset documents, this returns the outermost FRAMESET element.

attribute DOMString

cookie

This mutable string attribute denotes persistent state information that (1) is associated with the current frame or document and (2) is composed of information described by the cookies non-terminal of [IETF RFC 2965], Section 4.2.2.

If no persistent state information is available for the current frame or document document, then this property's value is an empty string.
When this attribute is read, all cookies are returned as a single string, with each cookie's name-value pair concatenated into a list of name-value pairs, each list item being separated by a ';' (semicolon).

When this attribute is set, the value it is set to should be a string that adheres to the cookie non-terminal of [IETF RFC 2965]; that is, it should be a single name-value pair followed by zero or more cookie attribute values. If no domain attribute is specified, then the domain attribute for the new value defaults to the host portion of an absolute URI [IETF RFC 2396] of the current frame or document. If no path attribute is specified, then the path attribute for the new value defaults to the absolute path portion of the URI [IETF RFC 2396] of the current frame or document. If no max-age attribute is specified, then the max-age attribute for the new value defaults to a user agent defined value. If a cookie with the specified name is already associated with the current frame or document, then the new value as well as the new attributes replace the old value and attributes. If a max-age attribute of 0 is specified for the new value, then any existing cookies of the specified name are removed from the cookie storage.

See [IETF RFC 2965] for the semantics of persistent state item attribute value pairs.

The precise nature of a user agent session is not defined by this specification.

DOMException SYNTAX_ERR

If the new value does not adhere to the cookie syntax specified by [IETF RFC 2965].

readonly attribute DOMString

domain

The domain name of the server that served the document, or null if the server cannot be identified by a domain name.

readonly attribute HTMLCollection

forms

A collection of all the forms of a document.

readonly attribute HTMLCollection

images

A collection of all the IMG elements in a document. The behavior is limited to IMG elements for backwards compatibility.

As suggested by [HTML 4.01], to include images, authors may use the OBJECT element or the IMG element. Therefore, it is recommended not to use this attribute to find the images in the document but getElementsByTagName with HTML 4.01 or getElementsByTagNameNS with XHTML 1.0.

readonly attribute HTMLCollection

links

A collection of all AREA elements and anchor (A) elements in a document with a value for the href attribute.

readonly attribute DOMString

referrer

Returns the URI [IETF RFC 2396] of the page that linked to this page. The value is an empty string if the user navigated to the page directly (not through a link, but, for example, via a bookmark).

attribute DOMString

title

The title of a document as specified by the TITLE element in the head of the document.

readonly attribute DOMString

URL

The absolute URI [IETF RFC 2396] of the document.

void

close()

Closes a document stream opened by open() and forces rendering.

NodeList

getElementsByName (in DOMString elementName)

With [HTML 4.01] documents, this method returns the (possibly empty) collection of elements whose name value is given by elementName. In [XHTML 1.0] documents, this methods only return the (possibly empty) collection of form controls with matching name. This method is case sensitive.

elementName of type DOMString

The name attribute value for an element.

NodeList

The matching elements.

void

open()

Open a document stream for writing. If a document exists in the target, this method clears it.

This method and the ones following allow a user to add to or replace the structure model of a document using strings of unparsed HTML. At the time of writing alternate methods for providing similar functionality for both HTML and XML documents were being considered

void

write (in DOMString text)

Write a string of text to a document stream opened by open(). Note that the function will produce a document which is not necessarily driven by a DTD and therefore might be produce an invalid result in the context of the document.

text of type DOMString

The string to be parsed into some structure in the document structure model.

void

writeln (in DOMString text)

Write a string of text followed by a newline character to a document stream opened by open(). Note that the function will produce a document which is not necessarily driven by a DTD and therefore might be produce an invalid result in the context of the document

text of type DOMString

The string to be parsed into some structure in the document structure model.

The FORM element encompasses behavior similar to a collection and an element. It provides direct access to the contained form controls as well as the attributes of the form element. See the FORM element definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

acceptCharset

List of character sets supported by the server. See the accept-charset attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

action

Server-side form handler. See the action attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

readonly attribute HTMLCollection

elements

Returns a collection of all form control elements in the form.

attribute DOMString

enctype

The content type of the submitted form, generally "application/x-www-form-urlencoded". See the enctype attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

The onsubmit even handler is not guaranteed to be triggered when invoking this method. The behavior is inconsistent for historical reasons and authors should not rely on a particular one.

Aligns this object (vertically or horizontally) with respect to its surrounding text. See the align attribute definition in HTML 4.01. This attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

alt

Alternate text for user agents not rendering the normal content of this element. See the alt attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

border

Width of border around image. See the border attribute definition in HTML 4.01. This attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.01. Note that the type of this attribute was DOMString in DOM Level 1 HTML [DOM Level 1].

attribute long

height

Height of the image in pixels. See the height attribute definition in HTML 4.01. Note that the type of this attribute was DOMString in DOM Level 1 HTML [DOM Level 1].

attribute long

hspace

Horizontal space to the left and right of this image in pixels. See the hspace attribute definition in HTML 4.01. This attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.01. Note that the type of this attribute was DOMString in DOM Level 1 HTML [DOM Level 1].

attribute boolean

isMap

Use server-side image map. See the ismap attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

longDesc

URI [IETF RFC 2396] designating a long description of this image or frame. See the longdesc attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

name

The name of the element (for backwards compatibility).

attribute DOMString

src

URI [IETF RFC 2396] designating the source of this image. See the src attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

useMap

Use client-side image map. See the usemap attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute long

vspace

Vertical space above and below this image in pixels. See the vspace attribute definition in HTML 4.01. This attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.01. Note that the type of this attribute was "DOMString" in DOM Level 1 HTML [DOM Level 1].

attribute long

width

The width of the image in pixels. See the width attribute definition in HTML 4.01. Note that the type of this attribute was DOMString in DOM Level 1 HTML [DOM Level 1].

Depending upon the environment in which the page is being viewed, the value property may be read-only for the file upload input type. For the "password" input type, the actual value returned may be masked to prevent unauthorized use. See the INPUT element definition in [HTML 4.01].

attribute DOMString

accept

A comma-separated list of content types that a server processing this form will handle correctly. See the accept attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

accessKey

A single character access key to give access to the form control. See the accesskey attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

align

Aligns this object (vertically or horizontally) with respect to its surrounding text. See the align attribute definition in HTML 4.01. This attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

alt

Alternate text for user agents not rendering the normal content of this element. See the alt attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute boolean

checked

When the type attribute of the element has the value "radio" or "checkbox", this represents the current state of the form control, in an interactive user agent. Changes to this attribute change the state of the form control, but do not change the value of the HTML checked attribute of the INPUT element.

During the handling of a click event on an input element with a type attribute that has the value "radio" or "checkbox", some implementations may change the value of this property before the event is being dispatched in the document. If the default action of the event is canceled, the value of the property may be changed back to its original value. This means that the value of this property during the handling of click events is implementation dependent.

attribute boolean

defaultChecked

When type has the value "radio" or "checkbox", this represents the HTML checked attribute of the element. The value of this attribute does not change if the state of the corresponding form control, in an interactive user agent, changes. See the checked attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

defaultValue

When the type attribute of the element has the value "text", "file" or "password", this represents the HTML value attribute of the element. The value of this attribute does not change if the contents of the corresponding form control, in an interactive user agent, changes. See the value attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute boolean

disabled

The control is unavailable in this context. See the disabled attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

readonly attribute HTMLFormElement

form

Returns the FORM element containing this control. Returns null if this control is not within the context of a form.

attribute long

maxLength

Maximum number of characters for text fields, when type has the value "text" or "password". See the maxlength attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

name

Form control or object name when submitted with a form. See the name attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute boolean

readOnly

This control is read-only. Relevant only when type has the value "text" or "password". See the readonly attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute unsigned long

size

Size information. The precise meaning is specific to each type of field. See the size attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

src

When the type attribute has the value "image", this attribute specifies the location of the image to be used to decorate the graphical submit button. See the src attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute long

tabIndex

Index that represents the element's position in the tabbing order. See the tabindex attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

type

The type of control created (all lower case). See the type attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

useMap

Use client-side image map. See the usemap attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

value

When the type attribute of the element has the value "text", "file" or "password", this represents the current contents of the corresponding form control, in an interactive user agent. Changing this attribute changes the contents of the form control, but does not change the value of the HTML value attribute of the element. When the type attribute of the element has the value "button", "hidden", "submit", "reset", "image", "checkbox" or "radio", this represents the HTML value attribute of the element. See the value attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

void

blur()

Removes keyboard focus from this element.

void

click()

Simulate a mouse-click. For INPUT elements whose type attribute has one of the following values: "button", "checkbox", "radio", "reset", or "submit".

void

focus()

Gives keyboard focus to this element.

void

select()

Select the contents of the text area. For INPUT elements whose type attribute has one of the following values: "text", "file", or "password".

The LINK element specifies a link to an external resource, and defines this document's relationship to that resource (or vice versa). See the LINK element definition in HTML 4.01 (see also the LinkStyle interface in the StyleSheet module [DOM Level 2 Style Sheets and CSS]).

attribute DOMString

charset

The character encoding of the resource being linked to. See the charset attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute boolean

disabled

Enables/disables the link. This is currently only used for style sheet links, and may be used to activate or deactivate style sheets.

attribute DOMString

href

The URI [IETF RFC 2396] of the linked resource. See the href attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

hreflang

Language code of the linked resource. See the hreflang attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

media

Designed for use with one or more target media. See the media attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

rel

Forward link type. See the rel attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

rev

Reverse link type. See the rev attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

target

Frame to render the resource in. See the target attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

In principle, all properties on the object element are read-write but in some environments some properties may be read-only once the underlying object is instantiated. See the OBJECT element definition in [HTML 4.01].

attribute DOMString

align

Aligns this object (vertically or horizontally) with respect to its surrounding text. See the align attribute definition in HTML 4.01. This attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

archive

Space-separated list of archives. See the archive attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

border

Width of border around the object. See the border attribute definition in HTML 4.01. This attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.01.

Represents the value of the HTML selected attribute. The value of this attribute does not change if the state of the corresponding form control, in an interactive user agent, changes. See the selected attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute boolean

disabled

The control is unavailable in this context. See the disabled attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

readonly attribute HTMLFormElement

form

Returns the FORM element containing this control. Returns null if this control is not within the context of a form.

readonly attribute long

index

The index of this OPTION in its parent SELECT, starting from 0.

attribute DOMString

label

Option label for use in hierarchical menus. See the label attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute boolean

selected

Represents the current state of the corresponding form control, in an interactive user agent. Changing this attribute changes the state of the form control, but does not change the value of the HTML selected attribute of the element.

readonly attribute DOMString

text

The text contained within the option element.

attribute DOMString

value

The current form control value. See the value attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

An HTMLOptionsCollection is a list of nodes representing HTML option element. An individual node may be accessed by either ordinal index or the node's name or id attributes.

Collections in the HTML DOM are assumed to be live meaning that they are automatically updated when the underlying document is changed.

attribute unsigned long

length

This attribute specifies the length or size of the list.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

if setting the length is not allowed by the implementation.

Node

item (in unsigned long index)

This method retrieves a node specified by ordinal index. Nodes are numbered in tree order (depth-first traversal order).

index of type unsigned long

The index of the node to be fetched. The index origin is 0.

Node

The Node at the corresponding position upon success. A value of null is returned if the index is out of range.

Node

namedItem (in DOMString name)

This method retrieves a Node using a name. It first searches for a Node with a matching id attribute. If it doesn't find one, it then searches for a Node with a matching name attribute, but only on those elements that are allowed a name attribute. This method is case insensitive in HTML documents and case sensitive in XHTML documents.

name of type DOMString

The name of the Node to be fetched.

Node

The Node with a name or id attribute whose value corresponds to the specified string. Upon failure (e.g., no node with this name exists), returns null.

The select element allows the selection of an option. The contained options can be directly accessed through the select element as a collection. See the SELECT element definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute boolean

disabled

The control is unavailable in this context. See the disabled attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

readonly attribute HTMLFormElement

form

Returns the FORM element containing this control. Returns null if this control is not within the context of a form.

attribute unsigned long

length

The number of options in this SELECT.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

if setting the length is not allowed by the implementation.

attribute boolean

multiple

If true, multiple OPTION elements may be selected in this SELECT. See the multiple attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

name

Form control or object name when submitted with a form. See the name attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

readonly attribute HTMLOptionsCollection

options

The collection of OPTION elements contained by this element.

attribute long

selectedIndex

The ordinal index of the selected option, starting from 0. The value -1 is returned if no element is selected. If multiple options are selected, the index of the first selected option is returned.

attribute long

size

Number of visible rows. See the size attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute long

tabIndex

Index that represents the element's position in the tabbing order. See the tabindex attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

readonly attribute DOMString

type

The type of this form control. This is the string "select-multiple" when the multiple attribute is true and the string "select-one" when false.

attribute DOMString

value

The current form control value (i.e. the value of the currently selected option), if multiple options are selected this is the value of the first selected option.

void

add (in HTMLElement element, in HTMLElement before)

Add a new element to the collection of OPTION elements for this SELECT. This method is the equivalent of the appendChild method of the Node interface if the before parameter is null. It is equivalent to the insertBefore method on the parent of before in all other cases. This method may have no effect if the new element is not an OPTION or an OPTGROUP.

element of type HTMLElement

The element to add.

before of type HTMLElement

The element to insert before, or null for the tail of the list.

DOMException NOT_FOUND_ERR

Raised if before is not a descendant of the SELECT element.

void

blur()

Removes keyboard focus from this element.

void

focus()

Gives keyboard focus to this element.

void

remove (in long index)

Remove an element from the collection of OPTION elements for this SELECT. Does nothing if no element has the given index.

The create* and delete* methods on the table allow authors to construct and modify tables. [HTML 4.01] specifies that only one of each of the CAPTION, THEAD, and TFOOT elements may exist in a table. Therefore, if one exists, and the createTHead() or createTFoot() method is called, the method returns the existing THead or TFoot element. See the TABLE element definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

align

Specifies the table's position with respect to the rest of the document. See the align attribute definition in HTML 4.01. This attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

bgColor

Cell background color. See the bgcolor attribute definition in HTML 4.01. This attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

border

The width of the border around the table. See the border attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute HTMLTableCaptionElement

caption

Returns the table's CAPTION, or void if none exists.

DOMException HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR

if the element is not a CAPTION.

attribute DOMString

cellPadding

Specifies the horizontal and vertical space between cell content and cell borders. See the cellpadding attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

cellSpacing

Specifies the horizontal and vertical separation between cells. See the cellspacing attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

frame

Specifies which external table borders to render. See the frame attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

readonly attribute HTMLCollection

rows

Returns a collection of all the rows in the table, including all in THEAD, TFOOT, all TBODY elements.

attribute DOMString

rules

Specifies which internal table borders to render. See the rules attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

summary

Description about the purpose or structure of a table. See the summary attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

readonly attribute HTMLCollection

tBodies

Returns a collection of the table bodies (including implicit ones).

attribute HTMLTableSectionElement

tFoot

Returns the table's TFOOT, or null if none exists.

DOMException HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR

if the element is not a TFOOT.

attribute HTMLTableSectionElement

tHead

Returns the table's THEAD, or null if none exists.

DOMException HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR

if the element is not a THEAD.

attribute DOMString

width

Specifies the desired table width. See the width attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

HTMLElement

createCaption()

Create a new table caption object or return an existing one.

HTMLElement

A CAPTION element.

HTMLElement

createTFoot()

Create a table footer row or return an existing one.

HTMLElement

A footer element (TFOOT).

HTMLElement

createTHead()

Create a table header row or return an existing one.

HTMLElement

A new table header element (THEAD).

void

deleteCaption()

Delete the table caption, if one exists.

void

deleteRow (in long index)

Delete a table row.

index of type long

The index of the row to be deleted. This index starts from 0 and is relative to the logical order (not document order) of all the rows contained inside the table. If the index is -1 the last row in the table is deleted.

DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR

Raised if the specified index is greater than or equal to the number of rows or if the index is a negative number other than -1.

void

deleteTFoot()

Delete the footer from the table, if one exists.

void

deleteTHead()

Delete the header from the table, if one exists.

HTMLElement

insertRow (in long index)

Insert a new empty row in the table. The new row is inserted immediately before and in the same section as the current indexth row in the table. If index is -1 or equal to the number of rows, the new row is appended. In addition, when the table is empty the row is inserted into a TBODY which is created and inserted into the table.

A table row cannot be empty according to [HTML 4.01].

index of type long

The row number where to insert a new row. This index starts from 0 and is relative to the logical order (not document order) of all the rows contained inside the table.

Horizontal alignment of data within cells of this row. See the align attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

bgColor

Background color for rows. See the bgcolor attribute definition in HTML 4.01. This attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.01.

readonly attribute HTMLCollection

cells

The collection of cells in this row.

attribute DOMString

ch

Alignment character for cells in a column. See the char attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

chOff

Offset of alignment character. See the charoff attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

readonly attribute long

rowIndex

This is in logical order and not in document order. The rowIndex does take into account sections (THEAD, TFOOT, or TBODY) within the table, placing THEAD rows first in the index, followed by TBODY rows, followed by TFOOT rows.

readonly attribute long

sectionRowIndex

The index of this row, relative to the current section (THEAD, TFOOT, or TBODY), starting from 0.

attribute DOMString

vAlign

Vertical alignment of data within cells of this row. See the valign attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

void

deleteCell (in long index)

Delete a cell from the current row.

index of type long

The index of the cell to delete, starting from 0. If the index is -1 the last cell in the row is deleted.

DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR

Raised if the specified index is greater than or equal to the number of cells or if the index is a negative number other than -1.

HTMLElement

insertCell (in long index)

Insert an empty TD cell into this row. If index is -1 or equal to the number of cells, the new cell is appended.

index; of type long

The place to insert the cell, starting from 0.

HTMLElement

The newly created cell.

DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR

Raised if the specified index is greater than the number of cells or if the index is a negative number other than -1.

Horizontal alignment of data in cells. See the align attribute for HTMLTheadElement for details.

attribute DOMString

ch

Alignment character for cells in a column. See the char attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

chOff

Offset of alignment character. See the charoff attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

readonly attribute HTMLCollection

rows

The collection of rows in this table section.

attribute DOMString

vAlign

Vertical alignment of data in cells. See the valign attribute for HTMLTheadElement for details.

void

deleteRow (in long index)

Delete a row from this section.

index of type long

The index of the row to be deleted, or -1 to delete the last row. This index starts from 0 and is relative only to the rows contained inside this section, not all the rows in the table.

DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR

Raised if the specified index is greater than or equal to the number of rows or if the index is a negative number other than -1.

HTMLElement

insertRow (in long index)

Insert a row into this section. The new row is inserted immediately before the current indexth row in this section. If index is -1 or equal to the number of rows in this section, the new row is appended.

index of type long

The row number where to insert a new row. This index starts from 0 and is relative only to the rows contained inside this section, not all the rows in the table.

HTMLElement

The newly created row.

DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR

Raised if the specified index is greater than the number of rows of if the index is a negative number other than -1.

A single character access key to give access to the form control. See the accesskey attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute long

cols

Width of control (in characters). See the cols attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute DOMString

defaultValue

Represents the contents of the element. The value of this attribute does not change if the contents of the corresponding form control, in an interactive user agent, changes.

attribute boolean

disabled

The control is unavailable in this context. See the disabled attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

readonly attribute HTMLFormElement

form

Returns the FORM element containing this control. Returns null if this control is not within the context of a form.

attribute DOMString

name

Form control or object name when submitted with a form. See the name attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute boolean

readOnly

This control is read-only. See the readonly attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute long

rows

Number of text rows. See the rows attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

attribute long

tabIndex

Index that represents the element's position in the tabbing order. See the tabindex attribute definition in HTML 4.01.

readonly attribute DOMString

type

The type of this form control. This the string "textarea".

attribute DOMString

value

Represents the current contents of the corresponding form control, in an interactive user agent. Changing this attribute changes the contents of the form control, but does not change the contents of the element. If the entirety of the data can not fit into a single DOMString, the implementation may truncate the data.

The LinkStyle interface provides a mechanism by which a style sheet can be retrieved from the node responsible for linking it into a document. An instance of the LinkStyle interface can be obtained using binding-specific casting methods on an instance of a linking node (HTMLLinkElement, HTMLStyleElement or ProcessingInstruction in DOM Level 2).

The MediaList interface provides the abstraction of an ordered collection of media, without defining or constraining how this collection is implemented. An empty list is the same as a list that contains the medium "all".

The items in the MediaList are accessible via an integral index, starting from 0.

readonly attribute unsigned long

length

The number of media in the list. The range of valid media is 0 to length-1 inclusive.

attribute DOMString

mediaText

The parsable textual representation of the media list. This is a comma-separated list of media.

DOMException SYNTAX_ERR

Raised if the specified string value has a syntax error and is unparsable.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this media list is readonly.

void

appendMedium(in DOMString newMedium)

Adds the medium newMedium to the end of the list. If the newMedium is already used, it is first removed.

newMedium of type DOMString

The new medium to add.

DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR

If the medium contains characters that are invalid in the underlying style language.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this list is readonly.

void

deleteMedium(in DOMString oldMedium)

Deletes the medium indicated by oldMedium from the list.

oldMedium of type DOMString

The medium to delete in the media list.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this list is readonly.

DOMException NOT_FOUND_ERR

Raised if oldMedium is not in the list.

DOMString

item(in unsigned long index)

Returns the indexth in the list. If index is greater than or equal to the number of media in the list, this returns null.

index of type unsigned long

Index into the collection.

DOMString

The medium at the indexth position in the MediaList, or null if that is not a valid index.

Objects implementing the NamedNodeMap interface are used to represent collections of nodes that can be accessed by name. Note that NamedNodeMap does not inherit from NodeList; NamedNodeMaps are not maintained in any particular order. Objects contained in an object implementing NamedNodeMap may also be accessed by an ordinal index, but this is simply to allow convenient enumeration of the contents of a NamedNodeMap, and does not imply that the DOM specifies an order to these Nodes.

NamedNodeMap objects in the DOM are live.

readonly attribute unsigned long

length

The number of nodes in this map. The range of valid child node indices is 0 to length-1 inclusive.

Node

getNamedItem (in DOMString name)

Retrieves a node specified by name.

name of type DOMString

The nodeName of a node to retrieve.

Node

A Node (of any type) with the specified nodeName, or null if it does not identify any node in this map.

Node

getNamedItemNS (in DOMString namespaceURI, in DOMString localName)

Retrieves a node specified by local name and namespace URI.

Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.

namespaceURI of type DOMString

The namespace URI of the node to retrieve.

localName of type DOMString

The local name of the node to retrieve.

Node

A Node (of any type) with the specified local name and namespace URI, or null if they do not identify any node in this map.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).

Node

item (in unsigned long index)

Returns the indexth item in the map. If index is greater than or equal to the number of nodes in this map, this returns null.

index of type unsigned long

Index into this map.

Node

The node at the indexth position in the map, or null if that is not a valid index.

Node

removeNamedItem(in DOMString name)

Removes a node specified by name. When this map contains the attributes attached to an element, if the removed attribute is known to have a default value, an attribute immediately appears containing the default value as well as the corresponding namespace URI, local name, and prefix when applicable.

name of type DOMString

The nodeName of the node to remove.

Node

The node removed from this map if a node with such a name exists.

DOMException NOT_FOUND_ERR

Raised if there is no node named name in this map.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this map is readonly.

Node

removeNamedItemNS

Removes a node specified by local name and namespace URI. A removed attribute may be known to have a default value when this map contains the attributes attached to an element, as returned by the attributes attribute of the Node interface. If so, an attribute immediately appears containing the default value as well as the corresponding namespace URI, local name, and prefix when applicable.

Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.

namespaceURI of type DOMString

The namespace URI of the node to remove.

localName of type DOMString

The local name of the node to remove.

Node

The node removed from this map if a node with such a local name and namespace URI exists.

DOMException NOT_FOUND_ERR

Raised if there is no node with the specified namespaceURI and localName in this map.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this map is readonly.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).

Node

setNamedItem (in Node arg)

Adds a node using its nodeName attribute. If a node with that name is already present in this map, it is replaced by the new one. Replacing a node by itself has no effect.

As the nodeName attribute is used to derive the name which the node must be stored under, multiple nodes of certain types (those that have a "special" string value) cannot be stored as the names would clash. This is seen as preferable to allowing nodes to be aliased.

arg of type Node

A node to store in this map. The node will later be accessible using the value of its nodeName attribute.

Node

If the new Node replaces an existing node the replaced Node is returned, otherwise null is returned.

DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR

Raised if arg was created from a different document than the one that created this map.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this map is readonly.

DOMException INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR

Raised if arg is an Attr that is already an attribute of another Element object. The DOM user must explicitly clone Attr nodes to re-use them in other elements.

DOMException HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR

Raised if an attempt is made to add a node doesn't belong in this NamedNodeMap. Examples would include trying to insert something other than an Attr node into an Element's map of attributes, or a non-Entity node into the DocumentType's map of Entities.

Node

setNamedItemNS (in Node arg)

Adds a node using its namespaceURI and localName. If a node with that namespace URI and that local name is already present in this map, it is replaced by the new one. Replacing a node by itself has no effect.

Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.

arg of type Node

A node to store in this map. The node will later be accessible using the value of its namespaceURI and localName attributes.

Node

If the new Node replaces an existing node the replaced Node is returned, otherwise null is returned.

DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR

Raised if arg was created from a different document than the one that created this map.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this map is readonly.

DOMException INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR

Raised if arg is an Attr that is already an attribute of another Element object. The DOM user must explicitly clone Attr nodes to re-use them in other elements.

DOMException HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR

Raised if an attempt is made to add a node doesn't belong in this NamedNodeMap. Examples would include trying to insert something other than an Attr node into an Element's map of attributes, or a non-Entity node into the DocumentType's map of Entities.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).

The NameList interface provides the abstraction of an ordered collection of parallel pairs of name and namespace values (which could be null values), without defining or constraining how this collection is implemented. The items in the NameList are accessible via an integral index, starting from 0.

readonly attribute unsigned long

length

The number of pairs (name and namespaceURI) in the list. The range of valid child node indices is 0 to length-1 inclusive.

boolean

contains (in DOMString str)

Test if a name is part of this NameList.

str of type DOMString

The name to look for.

boolean

true if the name has been found, false otherwise.

boolean

containsNS (in DOMString namespaceURI, in DOMString name)

Test if the pair namespaceURI/name is part of this NameList.

namespaceURI of type DOMString

The namespace URI to look for.

name of type DOMString

The name to look for.

boolean

true if the pair namespaceURI/name has been found, false otherwise.

DOMString

getName (in unsigned long index)

Returns the indexth name item in the collection.

index of type unsigned long

Index into the collection.

DOMString

The name at the indexth position in the NameList, or null if there is no name for the specified index or if the index is out of range.

DOMString

getNamespaceURI (in unsigned long index)

Returns the indexth namespaceURI item in the collection.

index of type unsigned long

Index into the collection.

DOMString

The namespace URI at the indexth position in the NameList, or null if there is no name for the specified index or if the index is out of range.

The Node interface is the primary datatype for the entire Document Object Model. It represents a single node in the document tree. While all objects implementing the Node interface expose methods for dealing with children, not all objects implementing the Node interface may have children. For example, Text nodes may not have children, and adding children to such nodes results in a DOMException being raised.

The attributes nodeName, nodeValue and attributes are included as a mechanism to get at node information without casting down to the specific derived interface. In cases where there is no obvious mapping of these attributes for a specific nodeType (e.g., nodeValue for an Element or attributes for a Comment), this returns null. Note that the specialized interfaces may contain additional and more convenient mechanisms to get and set the relevant information.

const unsigned short

ATTRIBUTE_NODE

= 2;

The node is an Attr.

const unsigned short

CDATA_SECTION_NODE

= 4;

The node is a CDATASection.

const unsigned short

COMMENT_NODE

= 8;

The node is a Comment.

const unsigned short

DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE

= 11;

The node is a DocumentFragment.

const unsigned short

DOCUMENT_NODE

= 9;

The node is a Document.

const unsigned short

DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE

= 10;

The node is a DocumentType.

const unsigned short

ELEMENT_NODE

= 1;

The node is an Element.

const unsigned short

ENTITY_NODE

= 6;

The node is an Entity.

const unsigned short

ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE

= 5;

The node is an EntityReference.

const unsigned short

NOTATION_NODE

= 12;

The node is a Notation.

const unsigned short

PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE

= 7;

The node is a ProcessingInstruction.

const unsigned short

TEXT_NODE

= 3;

The node is a Text node

Definition group NodeType

An integer indicating which type of node this is.

Numeric codes up to 200 are reserved to W3C for possible future use.

The values of nodeName, nodeValue, and attributes vary according to the node type as follows:

The node is contained by the reference node. A node which is contained is always following, too.

const unsigned short

DOCUMENT_POSITION_CONTAINS

= 0x08;

The node contains the reference node. A node which contains is always preceding, too.

const unsigned short

DOCUMENT_POSITION_DISCONNECTED

= 0x01;

The two nodes are disconnected. Order between disconnected nodes is always implementation-specific.

const unsigned short

DOCUMENT_POSITION_FOLLOWING

= 0x04;

The node follows the reference node.

const unsigned short

DOCUMENT_POSITION_IMPLEMENTATION_SPECIFIC

= 0x20;

The determination of preceding versus following is implementation-specific.

const unsigned short

DOCUMENT_POSITION_PRECEDING

= 0x02;

The second node precedes the reference node.

Definition group DocumentPosition

A bitmask indicating the relative document position of a node with respect to another node.

If the two nodes being compared are the same node, then no flags are set on the return.

Otherwise, the order of two nodes is determined by looking for common containers -- containers which contain both. A node directly contains any child nodes. A node also directly contains any other nodes attached to it such as attributes contained in an element or entities and notations contained in a document type. Nodes contained in contained nodes are also contained, but less-directly as the number of intervening containers increases.

If there is no common container node, then the order is based upon order between the root container of each node that is in no container. In this case, the result is disconnected and implementation-specific. This result is stable as long as these outer-most containing nodes remain in memory and are not inserted into some other containing node. This would be the case when the nodes belong to different documents or fragments, and cloning the document or inserting a fragment might change the order.

If one of the nodes being compared contains the other node, then the container precedes the contained node, and reversely the contained node follows the container. For example, when comparing an element against its own attribute or child, the element node precedes its attribute node and its child node, which both follow it.

If neither of the previous cases apply, then there exists a most-direct container common to both nodes being compared. In this case, the order is determined based upon the two determining nodes directly contained in this most-direct common container that either are or contain the corresponding nodes being compared.

If these two determining nodes are both child nodes, then the natural DOM order of these determining nodes within the containing node is returned as the order of the corresponding nodes. This would be the case, for example, when comparing two child elements of the same element.

If one of the two determining nodes is a child node and the other is not, then the corresponding node of the child node follows the corresponding node of the non-child node. This would be the case, for example, when comparing an attribute of an element with a child element of the same element.

If neither of the two determining node is a child node and one determining node has a greater value of nodeType than the other, then the corresponding node precedes the other. This would be the case, for example, when comparing an entity of a document type against a notation of the same document type.

If neither of the two determining node is a child node and nodeType is the same for both determining nodes, then an implementation-dependent order between the determining nodes is returned. This order is stable as long as no nodes of the same nodeType are inserted into or removed from the direct container. This would be the case, for example, when comparing two attributes of the same element, and inserting or removing additional attributes might change the order between existing attributes.

readonly attribute NamedNodeMap

attributes

A NamedNodeMap containing the attributes of this node (if it is an Element) or null otherwise.

readonly attribute DOMString

baseURI

The absolute base URI of this node or null if the implementation wasn't able to obtain an absolute URI. This value is computed as described in Base URIs. However, when the Document supports the feature "HTML" [DOM Level 2 HTML], the base URI is computed using first the value of the href attribute of the HTML BASE element if any, and the value of the documentURI attribute from the Document interface otherwise.

readonly attribute NodeList

childNodes

A NodeList that contains all children of this node. If there are no children, this is a NodeList containing no nodes.

readonly attribute Node

firstChild

The first child of this node. If there is no such node, this returns null.

readonly attribute Node

lastChild

The last child of this node. If there is no such node, this returns null.

readonly attribute DOMString

localName

Returns the local part of the qualified name of this node.

For nodes of any type other than ELEMENT_NODE and ATTRIBUTE_NODE and nodes created with a DOM Level 1 method, such as Document.createElement(), this is always null.

readonly attribute DOMString

namespaceURI

The namespace URI of this node, or null if it is unspecified (see XML Namespaces).

This is not a computed value that is the result of a namespace lookup based on an examination of the namespace declarations in scope. It is merely the namespace URI given at creation time.

For nodes of any type other than ELEMENT_NODE and ATTRIBUTE_NODE and nodes created with a DOM Level 1 method, such as Document.createElement(), this is always null.

Per the Namespaces in XML Specification [XML Namespaces] an attribute does not inherit its namespace from the element it is attached to. If an attribute is not explicitly given a namespace, it simply has no namespace.

readonly attribute Node

nextSibling

The node immediately following this node. If there is no such node, this returns null.

readonly attribute DOMString

nodeName

The name of this node, depending on its type; see the table above.

readonly attribute unsigned short

nodeType

A code representing the type of the underlying object, as defined above.

attribute DOMString

nodeValue

The value of this node, depending on its type; see the table above. When it is defined to be null, setting it has no effect, including if the node is read-only.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised when the node is readonly and if it is not defined to be null.

DOMException DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR

Raised when it would return more characters than fit in a DOMString variable on the implementation platform.

readonly attribute Document

ownerDocument

The Document object associated with this node. This is also the Document object used to create new nodes. When this node is a Document or a DocumentType which is not used with any Document yet, this is null.

readonly attribute Node

parentNode

The parent of this node. All nodes, except Attr, Document, DocumentFragment, Entity, and Notation may have a parent. However, if a node has just been created and not yet added to the tree, or if it has been removed from the tree, this is null.

attribute DOMString

prefix

The namespace prefix of this node, or null if it is unspecified. When it is defined to be null, setting it has no effect, including if the node is read-only.

Note that setting this attribute, when permitted, changes the nodeName attribute, which holds the qualified name, as well as the tagName and name attributes of the Element and Attr interfaces, when applicable.

Setting the prefix to null makes it unspecified, setting it to an empty string is implementation dependent.

Note also that changing the prefix of an attribute that is known to have a default value, does not make a new attribute with the default value and the original prefix appear, since the namespaceURI and localName do not change.

For nodes of any type other than ELEMENT_NODE and ATTRIBUTE_NODE and nodes created with a DOM Level 1 method, such as createElement from the Document interface, this is always null.

DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR

Raised if the specified prefix contains an illegal character according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this node is readonly.

DOMException NAMESPACE_ERR

Raised if the specified prefix is malformed per the Namespaces in XML specification, if the namespaceURI of this node is null, if the specified prefix is "xml" and the namespaceURI of this node is different from "http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace", if this node is an attribute and the specified prefix is "xmlns" and the namespaceURI of this node is different from "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/", or if this node is an attribute and the qualifiedName of this node is "xmlns" [XML Namespaces].

readonly attribute Node

previousSibling

The node immediately preceding this node. If there is no such node, this returns null.

attribute DOMString

textContent

This attribute returns the text content of this node and its descendants. When it is defined to be null, setting it has no effect. On setting, any possible children this node may have are removed and, if it the new string is not empty or null, replaced by a single Text node containing the string this attribute is set to.

On getting, no serialization is performed, the returned string does not contain any markup. No whitespace normalization is performed and the returned string does not contain the white spaces in element content (see the attribute Text.isElementContentWhitespace). Similarly, on setting, no parsing is performed either, the input string is taken as pure textual content.

The string returned is made of the text content of this node depending on its type, as defined below:

Raised when it would return more characters than fit in a DOMString variable on the implementation platform.

Node

appendChild (in Node newChild)

Adds the node newChild to the end of the list of children of this node. If the newChild is already in the tree, it is first removed.

newChild of type Node

The node to add. If it is a DocumentFragment object, the entire contents of the document fragment are moved into the child list of this node

Node

The node added.

DOMException HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR

Raised if this node is of a type that does not allow children of the type of the newChild node, or if the node to append is one of this node's ancestors or this node itself, or if this node is of type Document and the DOM application attempts to append a second DocumentType or Element node.

DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR

Raised if newChild was created from a different document than the one that created this node.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this node is readonly or if the previous parent of the node being inserted is readonly.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

if the newChild node is a child of the Document node, this exception might be raised if the DOM implementation doesn't support the removal of the DocumentType child or Element child.

Node

cloneNode (in boolean deep)

Returns a duplicate of this node, i.e., serves as a generic copy constructor for nodes. The duplicate node has no parent (parentNode is null) and no user data. User data associated to the imported node is not carried over. However, if any UserDataHandlers has been specified along with the associated data these handlers will be called with the appropriate parameters before this method returns.

Cloning an Element copies all attributes and their values, including those generated by the XML processor to represent defaulted attributes, but this method does not copy any children it contains unless it is a deep clone. This includes text contained in an the Element since the text is contained in a child Text node. Cloning an Attr directly, as opposed to be cloned as part of an Element cloning operation, returns a specified attribute (specified is true). Cloning an Attr always clones its children, since they represent its value, no matter whether this is a deep clone or not. Cloning an EntityReference automatically constructs its subtree if a corresponding Entity is available, no matter whether this is a deep clone or not. Cloning any other type of node simply returns a copy of this node.

Note that cloning an immutable subtree results in a mutable copy, but the children of an EntityReference clone are readonly. In addition, clones of unspecified Attr nodes are specified. And, cloning Document, DocumentType, Entity, and Notation nodes is implementation dependent.

deep of type boolean

If true, recursively clone the subtree under the specified node; if false, clone only the node itself (and its attributes, if it is an Element).

Node

The duplicate node.

unsigned short

compareDocumentPosition (in Node other)

Compares the reference node, i.e. the node on which this method is being called, with a node, i.e. the one passed as a parameter, with regard to their position in the document and according to the document order.

other of type Node

The node to compare against the reference node.

unsigned short

Returns how the node is positioned relatively to the reference node.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

when the compared nodes are from different DOM implementations that do not coordinate to return consistent implementation-specific results.

DOMObject

getFeature (in DOMString feature, in DOMString version)

This method returns a specialized object which implements the specialized APIs of the specified feature and version, as specified in DOM Features. The specialized object may also be obtained by using binding-specific casting methods but is not necessarily expected to, as discussed in Mixed DOM Implementations. This method also allow the implementation to provide specialized objects which do not support the Node interface.

feature of type DOMString

The name of the feature requested. Note that any plus sign "+" prepended to the name of the feature will be ignored since it is not significant in the context of this method.

version of type DOMString

This is the version number of the feature to test.

DOMObject

Returns an object which implements the specialized APIs of the specified feature and version, if any, or null if there is no object which implements interfaces associated with that feature. If the DOMObject returned by this method implements the Node interface, it must delegate to the primary core Node and not return results inconsistent with the primary core Node such as attributes, childNodes, etc.

DOMUserData

getUserData (in DOMString key)

Retrieves the object associated to a key on a this node. The object must first have been set to this node by calling setUserData with the same key.

key of type DOMString

The key the object is associated to.

DOMUserData

Returns the DOMUserData associated to the given key on this node, or null if there was none.

boolean

hasAttributes()

Returns whether this node (if it is an element) has any attributes.

boolean

Returns true if this node has any attributes, false otherwise.

boolean

hasChildNodes()

Returns whether this node has any children.

boolean

Returns true if this node has any children, false otherwise.

Node

insertBefore (in Node newChild, in Node refChild)

Inserts the node newChild before the existing child node refChild. If refChild is null, insert newChild at the end of the list of children.

If newChild is a DocumentFragment object, all of its children are inserted, in the same order, before refChild. If the newChild is already in the tree, it is first removed.

Inserting a node before itself is implementation dependent.

newChild of type Node

The node to insert.

refChild of type Node

The reference node, i.e., the node before which the new node must be inserted.

Node

The node being inserted.

DOMException HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR

Raised if this node is of a type that does not allow children of the type of the newChild node, or if the node to insert is one of this node's ancestors or this node itself, or if this node is of type Document and the DOM application attempts to insert a second DocumentType or Element node.

DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR

Raised if newChild was created from a different document than the one that created this node.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this node is readonly or if the parent of the node being inserted is readonly.

DOMException NOT_FOUND_ERR

Raised if refChild is not a child of this node.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

if this node is of type Document, this exception might be raised if the DOM implementation doesn't support the insertion of a DocumentType or Element node.

boolean

isDefaultNamespace (in DOMString namespaceURI)

This method checks if the specified namespaceURI is the default namespace or not.

namespaceURI of type DOMString

The namespace URI to look for.

boolean

Returns true if the specified namespaceURI is the default namespace, false otherwise.

boolean

isEqualNode (in Node arg)

Tests whether two nodes are equal.

This method tests for equality of nodes, not sameness (i.e., whether the two nodes are references to the same object) which can be tested with Node.isSameNode(). All nodes that are the same will also be equal, though the reverse may not be true.

Two nodes are equal if and only if the following conditions are satisfied:

The two nodes are of the same type.

The following string attributes are equal: nodeName, localName, namespaceURI, prefix, nodeValue. This is: they are both null, or they have the same length and are character for character identical.

The attributes NamedNodeMaps are equal. This is: they are both null, or they have the same length and for each node that exists in one map there is a node that exists in the other map and is equal, although not necessarily at the same index.

The childNodes NodeLists are equal. This is: they are both null, or they have the same length and contain equal nodes at the same index. Note that normalization can affect equality; to avoid this, nodes should be normalized before being compared.

For two DocumentType nodes to be equal, the following conditions must also be satisfied:

The following string attributes are equal: publicId, systemId, internalSubset.

The entities NamedNodeMaps are equal.

The notations NamedNodeMaps are equal.

On the other hand, the following do not affect equality: the ownerDocument, baseURI, and parentNode attributes, the specified attribute for Attr nodes, the schemaTypeInfo attribute for Attr and Element nodes, the Text.isElementContentWhitespace attribute for Text nodes, as well as any user data or event listeners registered on the nodes.

As a general rule, anything not mentioned in the description above is not significant in consideration of equality checking. Note that future versions of this specification may take into account more attributes and implementations conform to this specification are expected to be updated accordingly.

arg of type Node

The node to compare equality with.

boolean

Returns true if the nodes are equal, false otherwise.

boolean

isSameNode (in Node other)

Returns whether this node is the same node as the given one.

This method provides a way to determine whether two Node references returned by the implementation reference the same object. When two Node references are references to the same object, even if through a proxy, the references may be used completely interchangeably, such that all attributes have the same values and calling the same DOM method on either reference always has exactly the same effect.

other of type Node

The node to test against.

boolean

Returns true if the nodes are the same, false otherwise.

boolean

isSupported (in DOMString feature, in DOMString version)

Tests whether the DOM implementation implements a specific feature and that feature is supported by this node, as specified in DOM Features.

feature of type DOMString

The name of the feature to test.

version of type DOMString

This is the version number of the feature to test.

boolean

Returns true if the specified feature is supported on this node, false otherwise.

DOMString

lookupNamespaceURI (in DOMString prefix)

Look up the namespace URI associated to the given prefix, starting from this node.

See Namespace URI Lookup for details on the algorithm used by this method.

prefix of type DOMString

The prefix to look for. If this parameter is null, the method will return the default namespace URI if any.

DOMString

Returns the associated namespace URI or null if none is found.

DOMString

lookupPrefix (in DOMString namespaceURI)

Look up the prefix associated to the given namespace URI, starting from this node. The default namespace declarations are ignored by this method.

See Namespace Prefix Lookup for details on the algorithm used by this method.

namespaceURI of type DOMString

The namespace URI to look for.

DOMString

Returns an associated namespace prefix if found or null if none is found. If more than one prefix are associated to the namespace prefix, the returned namespace prefix is implementation dependent.

void

normalize()

Puts all Text nodes in the full depth of the sub-tree underneath this Node, including attribute nodes, into a "normal" form where only structure (e.g., elements, comments, processing instructions, CDATA sections, and entity references) separates Text nodes, i.e., there are neither adjacent Text nodes nor empty Text nodes. This can be used to ensure that the DOM view of a document is the same as if it were saved and re-loaded, and is useful when operations (such as XPointer [XPointer] lookups) that depend on a particular document tree structure are to be used. If the parameter "normalize-characters" of the DOMConfiguration object attached to the Node.ownerDocument is true, this method will also fully normalize the characters of the Text nodes.

In cases where the document contains CDATASections, the normalize operation alone may not be sufficient, since XPointers do not differentiate between Text nodes and CDATASection nodes.

Node

removeChild (in Node oldChild)

Removes the child node indicated by oldChild from the list of children, and returns it.

oldChild of type Node

The node being removed.

Node

The node removed.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this node is readonly.

DOMException NOT_FOUND_ERR

Raised if oldChild is not a child of this node.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

if this node is of type Document, this exception might be raised if the DOM implementation doesn't support the removal of the DocumentType child or the Element child.

Node

replaceChild (in Node newChild, in Node oldChild)

Replaces the child node oldChild with newChild in the list of children, and returns the oldChild node.

If newChild is a DocumentFragment object, oldChild is replaced by all of the DocumentFragment children, which are inserted in the same order. If the newChild is already in the tree, it is first removed.

Replacing a node with itself is implementation dependent.

newChild of type Node

The new node to put in the child list.

oldChild of type Node

The node being replaced in the list.

Node

The node replaced.

DOMException HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR

Raised if this node is of a type that does not allow children of the type of the newChild node, or if the node to put in is one of this node's ancestors or this node itself, or if this node is of type Document and the result of the replacement operation would add a second DocumentType or Element on the Document node.

DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR

Raised if newChild was created from a different document than the one that created this node.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if this node or the parent of the new node is readonly.

DOMException NOT_FOUND_ERR

Raised if oldChild is not a child of this node.

DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR

if this node is of type Document, this exception might be raised if the DOM implementation doesn't support the replacement of the DocumentType child or Element child.

This interface represents a notation declared in the DTD. A notation either declares, by name, the format of an unparsed entity (see section 4.7 of the XML 1.0 specification [XML 1.0]), or is used for formal declaration of processing instruction targets (see section 2.6 of the XML 1.0 specification [XML 1.0]). The nodeName attribute inherited from Node is set to the declared name of the notation.

The DOM Core does not support editing Notation nodes; they are therefore readonly.

A Notation node does not have any parent.

readonly attribute DOMString

publicId

description

readonly attribute DOMString

systemId

The system identifier of this notation. If the system identifier was not specified, this is null. This may be an absolute URI or not.

The ProcessingInstruction interface represents a "processing instruction", used in XML as a way to keep processor-specific information in the text of the document.

No lexical check is done on the content of a processing instruction and it is therefore possible to have the character sequence "?>" in the content, which is illegal a processing instruction per section 2.6 of [XML 1.0]. The presence of this character sequence must generate a fatal error during serialization.

attribute DOMString

data

The content of this processing instruction. This is from the first non white space character after the target to the character immediately preceding the ?>.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

readonly attribute DOMString

target

The target of this processing instruction. XML defines this as being the first token following the markup that begins the processing instruction.

The Rect interface is used to represent any rect value. This interface reflects the values in the underlying style property. Hence, modifications made to the CSSPrimitiveValue objects modify the style property.

The RGBColor interface is used to represent any RGB color value. This interface reflects the values in the underlying style property. Hence, modifications made to the CSSPrimitiveValue objects modify the style property.

A specified RGB color is not clipped (even if the number is outside the range 0-255 or 0%-100%). A computed RGB color is clipped depending on the device.

Even if a style sheet can only contain an integer for a color value, the internal storage of this integer is a float, and this can be used as a float in the specified or the computed style.

A color percentage value can always be converted to a number and vice versa.

The StyleSheet interface is the abstract base interface for any type of style sheet. It represents a single style sheet associated with a structured document. In HTML, the StyleSheet interface represents either an external style sheet, included via the HTML LINK element, or an inline STYLE element. In XML, this interface represents an external style sheet, included via a style sheet processing instruction.

attribute boolean

disabled

false if the style sheet is applied to the document. true if it is not. Modifying this attribute may cause a new resolution of style for the document. A stylesheet only applies if both an appropriate medium definition is present and the disabled attribute is false. So, if the media doesn't apply to the current user agent, the disabled attribute is ignored.

readonly attribute DOMString

href

If the style sheet is a linked style sheet, the value of its attribute is its location. For inline style sheets, the value of this attribute is null. See the href attribute definition for the LINK element in HTML 4.0, and the href pseudo-attribute for the XML style sheet processing instruction.

readonly attribute MediaList

media

The intended destination media for style information. The media is often specified in the ownerNode. If no media has been specified, the MediaList will be empty. See the media attribute definition for the LINK element in HTML 4.0, and the media pseudo-attribute for the XML style sheet processing instruction . Modifying the media list may cause a change to the attribute disabled.

readonly attribute Node

ownerNode

The node that associates this style sheet with the document. For HTML, this may be the corresponding LINK or STYLE element. For XML, it may be the linking processing instruction. For style sheets that are included by other style sheets, the value of this attribute is null.

readonly attribute StyleSheet

parentStyleSheet

For style sheet languages that support the concept of style sheet inclusion, this attribute represents the including style sheet, if one exists. If the style sheet is a top-level style sheet, or the style sheet language does not support inclusion, the value of this attribute is null.

readonly attribute DOMString

title

The advisory title. The title is often specified in the ownerNode. See the title attribute definition for the LINK element in HTML 4.0, and the title pseudo-attribute for the XML style sheet processing instruction.

readonly attribute DOMString

type

This specifies the style sheet language for this style sheet. The style sheet language is specified as a content type (e.g. "text/css"). The content type is often specified in the ownerNode. Also see the type attribute definition for the LINK element in HTML 4.0, and the type pseudo-attribute for the XML style sheet processing instruction.

The Text interface inherits from CharacterData and represents the textual content (termed character data in XML) of an Element or Attr. If there is no markup inside an element's content, the text is contained in a single object implementing the Text interface that is the only child of the element. If there is markup, it is parsed into the information items (elements, comments, etc.) and Text nodes that form the list of children of the element.

When a document is first made available via the DOM, there is only one Text node for each block of text. Users may create adjacent Text nodes that represent the contents of a given element without any intervening markup, but should be aware that there is no way to represent the separations between these nodes in XML or HTML, so they will not (in general) persist between DOM editing sessions. The Node.normalize() method merges any such adjacent Text objects into a single node for each block of text.

No lexical check is done on the content of a Text node and, depending on its position in the document, some characters must be escaped during serialization using character references; e.g. the characters "<&" if the textual content is part of an element or of an attribute, the character sequence "]]>" when part of an element, the quotation mark character " or the apostrophe character ' when part of an attribute.

readonly attribute boolean

isElementContentWhitespace

Returns whether this text node contains element content whitespace, often abusively called "ignorable whitespace". The text node is determined to contain whitespace in element content during the load of the document or if validation occurs while using Document.normalizeDocument().

readonly attribute DOMString

wholeText

Returns all text of Text nodes logically-adjacent text nodes to this node, concatenated in document order.

Text

replaceWholeText (in DOMString content)

Replaces the text of the current node and all logically-adjacent text nodes with the specified text. All logically-adjacent text nodes are removed including the current node unless it was the recipient of the replacement text.

This method returns the node which received the replacement text. The returned node is:

null, when the replacement text is the empty string;

the current node, except when the current node is read-only;

a new Text node of the same type (Text or CDATASection) as the current node inserted at the location of the replacement.

Where the nodes to be removed are read-only descendants of an EntityReference, the EntityReference must be removed instead of the read-only nodes. If any EntityReference to be removed has descendants that are not EntityReference, Text, or CDATASection nodes, the replaceWholeText method must fail before performing any modification of the document, raising a DOMException with the code NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR.

For instance, in the example below calling replaceWholeText on the Text node that contains "bar" fails, because the EntityReference node "ent" contains an Element node which cannot be removed.

content of type DOMString

The content of the replacing Text node.

Text

The Text node created with the specified content.

DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR

Raised if one of the Text nodes being replaced is readonly.

Text

splitText (in unsigned long offset)

Breaks this node into two nodes at the specified offset, keeping both in the tree as siblings. After being split, this node will contain all the content up to the offset point. A new node of the same type, which contains all the content at and after the offset point, is returned. If the original node had a parent node, the new node is inserted as the next sibling of the original node. When the offset is equal to the length of this node, the new node has no data.

offset of type unsigned long

The 16-bit unit offset at which to split, starting from 0.

Text

The new node, of the same type as this node.

DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR

Raised if the specified offset is negative or greater than the number of 16-bit units in data.

The TypeInfo interface represents a type referenced from Element or Attr nodes, specified in the schemas associated with the document. The type is a pair of a namespace URI and name properties, and depends on the document's schema.

If the document's schema is an XML DTD [XML 1.0], the values are computed as follows:

If this type is referenced from an Attr node, typeNamespace is "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml" and typeName represents the [attribute type] property in the [XML Information Set]. If there is no declaration for the attribute, typeNamespace and typeName are null.

If this type is referenced from an Element node, typeNamespace and typeName are null.

If the document's schema is an XML Schema [XML Schema Part 1], the values are computed as follows using the post-schema-validation infoset contributions (also called PSVI contributions):

If the [validity] property exists AND is "invalid" or "notKnown": the {target namespace} and {name} properties of the declared type if available, otherwise null.

At the time of writing, the XML Schema specification does not require exposing the declared type. Thus, DOM implementations might choose not to provide type information if validity is not valid.

If the [validity] property exists and is "valid":

If [member type definition] exists:

If {name} is not absent, then expose {name} and {target namespace} properties of the [member type definition] property;

Otherwise, expose the namespace and local name of the corresponding anonymous type name.

If the [type definition] property exists:

If {name} is not absent, then expose {name} and {target namespace} properties of the [type definition] property;

Otherwise, expose the namespace and local name of the corresponding anonymous type name.

If the [member type definition anonymous] exists:

If it is false, then expose [member type definition name] and [member type definition namespace] properties;

Otherwise, expose the namespace and local name of the corresponding anonymous type name.

If the [type definition anonymous] exists:

If it is false, then expose [type definition name] and [type definition namespace] properties;

Otherwise, expose the namespace and local name of the corresponding anonymous type name.

Other schema languages are outside the scope of the W3C and therefore should define how to represent their type systems using TypeInfo.

Definition group DerivationMethods

These are the available values for the derivationMethod parameter used by the method TypeInfo.isDerivedFrom(). It is a set of possible types of derivation, and the values represent bit positions. If a bit in the derivationMethod parameter is set to 1, the corresponding type of derivation will be taken into account when evaluating the derivation between the reference type definition and the other type definition. When using the isDerivedFrom method, combining all of them in the derivationMethod parameter is equivalent to invoking the method for each of them separately and combining the results with the OR boolean function. This specification only defines the type of derivation for XML Schema.

In addition to the types of derivation listed below, please note that:

any type derives from xsd:anyType.

any simple type derives from xsd:anySimpleType by restriction.

any complex type does not derive from xsd:anySimpleType by restriction.

const unsigned long

DERIVATION_EXTENSION

= 0x00000002;

If the document's schema is an XML Schema [XML Schema Part 1], this constant represents the derivation by extension.

The reference type definition is derived by extension from the other type definition if the other type definition can be reached recursively following the {base type definition} property from the reference type definition, and at least one of the derivation methods involved is an extension.

const unsigned long

DERIVATION_LIST

= 0x00000008;

If the document's schema is an XML Schema [XML Schema Part 1], this constant represents the list.

The reference type definition is derived by list from the other type definition if there exists two type definitions T1 and T2 such as the reference type definition is derived from T1 by DERIVATION_RESTRICTION or DERIVATION_EXTENSION, T2 is derived from the other type definition by DERIVATION_RESTRICTION, T1 has {variety} list, and T2 is the {item type definition}. Note that T1 could be the same as the reference type definition, and T2 could be the same as the other type definition.

const unsigned long

DERIVATION_RESTRICTION

= 0x00000001;

If the document's schema is an XML Schema [XML Schema Part 1], this constant represents the derivation by restriction if complex types are involved, or a restriction if simple types are involved.

The reference type definition is derived by restriction from the other type definition if the other type definition is the same as the reference type definition, or if the other type definition can be reached recursively following the {base type definition} property from the reference type definition, and all the derivation methods involved are restriction.

const unsigned long

DERIVATION_UNION

= 0x00000004;

If the document's schema is an XML Schema [XML Schema Part 1], this constant represents the union if simple types are involved.

The reference type definition is derived by union from the other type definition if there exists two type definitions T1 and T2 such as the reference type definition is derived from T1 by DERIVATION_RESTRICTION or DERIVATION_EXTENSION, T2 is derived from the other type definition by DERIVATION_RESTRICTION, T1 has {variety} union, and one of the {member type definitions} is T2. Note that T1 could be the same as the reference type definition, and T2 could be the same as the other type definition.

readonly attribute DOMString

typeName

The name of a type declared for the associated element or attribute, or null if unknown.

readonly attribute DOMString

typeNamespace

The namespace of the type declared for the associated element or attribute or null if the element does not have declaration or if no namespace information is available.

This method returns if there is a derivation between the reference type definition, i.e. the TypeInfo on which the method is being called, and the other type definition, i.e. the one passed as parameters.

typeNamespaceArg of type DOMString

the namespace of the other type definition.

typeNameArg of type DOMString

the name of the other type definition.

derivationMethod of type unsigned long

the type of derivation and conditions applied between two types, as described in the list of constants provided in this interface.

boolean

If the document's schema is a DTD or no schema is associated with the document, this method will always return false. If the document's schema is an XML Schema, the method will true if the reference type definition is derived from the other type definition according to the derivation parameter. If the value of the parameter is 0 (no bit is set to 1 for the derivationMethod parameter), the method will return true if the other type definition can be reached by recursing any combination of {base type definition}, {item type definition}, or {member type definitions} from the reference type definition.

When associating an object to a key on a node using Node.setUserData() the application can provide a handler that gets called when the node the object is associated to is being cloned, imported, or renamed. This can be used by the application to implement various behaviors regarding the data it associates to the DOM nodes. This interface defines that handler.

Definition group OperationType

An integer indicating the type of operation being performed on a node.

const unsigned short

NODE_ADOPTED

= 5;

The node is adopted, using Document.adoptNode().

const unsigned short

NODE_CLONED

= 1;

The node is cloned, using Node.cloneNode().

const unsigned short

NODE_DELETED

= 3;

The node is deleted.

This may not be supported or may not be reliable in certain environments, such as Java, where the implementation has no real control over when objects are actually deleted.